


Betrayer

by justabi



Series: Cheating is not the only way to Betray your heart. [2]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Angry Sex, Angst, Cheating, Multi, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-09-22
Updated: 2004-09-22
Packaged: 2017-10-02 08:55:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justabi/pseuds/justabi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His dreams were a patchwork of memories, some of happy times, some decidedly not, but they all made his chest hurt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Betrayer

Lex walked calmly back to his office and grabbed his laptop, his cell phone and the first pair of keys he ran across. He walked down the hall and out into the foyer where he stepped in the elevator and pressed a button. When the doors opened on his private garage level he paced swiftly down the row of fine automobiles until one chirped. He slid into the molded leather and drove out of there as fast as he could, trying desperately to forget what had just happened.

For some reason he had thought that humiliating Clark would make him feel better, that leaving him on the floor in a pool of his own vomit with snot and tears running down his pretty face would somehow assuage the pain of the betrayal. But it had only made it worse after the momentary glee of hurting the only one who could still hurt him, just as it had after the scene with Lois in the office. How could he still feel shame, when he knew that Clark deserved every second of it. More even. But the look on his face.

The LexCorp jet was fueled and ready to go when Lex arrived at the airstrip. He slept all the way to LA where he switched planes and promptly fell asleep again. The trip might have been smooth, but then again there might have been turbulence enough to wake the dead. He hadn't been able to sleep on flights since his second marriage literally crashed and burned, but his current level of mental and emotional exhaustion overrode his anxiety. At least the plane had a bed. And clothes, since he hadn't bothered to pack in his haste to get away from the penthouse.

Even sleep could not inure him from the pain, though. His dreams were a patchwork of memories, some of happy times, some decidedly not, but they all made his chest hurt. He woke with the memory of the first time Clark kissed him playing in his mind.

* * *

Clark had been drinking; Lex could smell it on his breath. Vodka. Probably beer, too. And he smelled vaguely of pot, so most likely fresh from a frat party. Met U was one of the top party schools in the nation; there was always something to celebrate. And Clark had clearly been celebrating. Normally he was fairly demonstrative, but intoxicated he never stopped touching, leaning in, petting Lex like a kitten. Lex almost called him Lenny, but then he didn't like the implications of who and or what that would make him.

"Did you have fun at the frat, Clark?"

"Soooo much fun, Lex. You should have been there. There were these girls..." Lex zone out as Clark droned on about the perfection of their tits and the hypnotic effects thereof. He really didn't care if Clark fucked every girl in the entire freshman class, but he didn't want to hear about it.

Though he had never actually said anything definite, but Lex knew that Clark had lost his virginity to Lana Lang after the Senior Prom over a year ago. Ever one for obfuscating in the face of the obvious truth, Clark had gone on and on about waiting for someone he loved. Lex knew that Clark held a certain amount of contempt for his practice of sleeping with women he cared little or nothing for, but never so much as the day after the Prom. Lex had made a subtle, but lewd suggestion about the removal of Lana's corsage, which made Clark flush prettily and suggest that unlike some people he was a gentleman.

But Lex knew Lana wasn't a virgin, not after that summer in Paris, and she certainly wouldn't be passing up the opportunity of having Clark all to herself. She had come to Lex to buy the condoms for Christ's sake, so there was no point in Clark's little _gentleman_ routine. Teenaged boys just didn't pass up the chance to have sex with their _true love_ on prom night. And now with the college girls, who he didn't seem to need to love to take to bed, but really Lex couldn't say because he tuned out whenever Clark started talking about all the nubile young females at the campus parties.

"...and then I sucked him off right there in front of everyone."

"What?!" Clearly he had missed something critical in this conversation.

"You aren't listening to me. You're doing that grumpy scowl thing you do whenever I start talking about parties at the frat. You're like a million miles away."

"I'm sorry, Clark. Please continue."

"I want you to stop thinking about whatever it is you think about when you get that scowly face. I don't want you to think about anything but me right now."

"You have my complete attention."

"No, I don't think I do, but I think I know how to get it."

Clark was suddenly straddling his lap pressing a sloppy kiss onto his mouth. Lex was too shocked to fight him off at first and once Clark's tongue was in his mouth, bodies pressed together and twisted till he was laying flat on his back with Clark on top of him, the damage was done and Lex was helpless. Clark was too strong, and he only moaned when Lex wiggled, trying to get away from the steel trap of Clark's beautiful body.

So he gave in, kissed back and let himself imagine for a moment that this was his fantasy, that Clark loved him the way he had always loved Clark, that he wasn't just being used as some kind of convenient drunken experiment during Clark's inevitable slut phase.

* * *

"Kon bon wa. Yookoso ne Nihon desu, Ruto-san. Koko wa Narita International Airport desu. Watashi no namea wa Fumito desu. Tabe-masu ka. Resturan e iki-masu ka." _Good evening. Welcome to Japan, Mr. Luthor. This is Narita International Airport. My name is Fumito. Would you like to eat? Would you like to go to a restaurant?_ The aide was polite and kept his Japanese simple for Lex.

"Iie. Hoteru de tabemasu, Fumito-san, kudasai." _No, I'll eat at the hotel, please, Mr. Fumito_. Actually, he really wasn't hungry and he hadn't been for more than a week. All he really wanted was to go back to sleep.

"Hai, kashikomarimasita. Kite kudasai." _I understand. Please come with me_.

"Uisuki o onegai-shimasu ka, kudasai." _I'd like some whiskey, please_.

* * *

Clark cut a handsome figure in his tuxedo, even with his bowtie crooked. Lex had tied it for him, but somewhere in the heat of passion it must have gotten pulled a bit. His hair was disheveled and his face was flushed just enough to bring out the green of his eyes. Lex kissed him hard and relieved him of his cummerbund. Lex deftly unzipped the pants and hitched the starched white shirt out of the way.

Clark murmured, "Thank you," huskily in his ear.

Suddenly Lex was across the room.

The beautiful dark haired girl in the long white prom dress cried out as Clark thrust into her. Lex ran over, tried to pull Clark off Lana, but he just kissed her and whispered into her hair how glad he was that he had waited for someone he really loved, how beautiful and perfect she was. Lex screamed and beat his fists into the black clad back of his best friend. The cummerbund lay discarded on the floor next to the corsage Lex had picked out.

The prom dress and the girl in it subtly shifted. Clark was still fucking her like Lex wasn't yelling at him to stop, screaming at the top of his lungs and pummeling his fists into a bloody pulp on his steel frame. Lena looked ethereal in her wedding dress. She laughed while Clark told her he loved her, that she was beautiful and perfect, that Lex would never know. Her bouquet fell from her hand and white tulips littered the ground.

When she shifted again Lex woke up screaming. Lois looked amazing in white.

* * *

"Ruto-san, uchi no fuku-sacho o shokai shimasu." _Mr. Luthor, I would like to introduce our executive Vice President to you_.

"Zehi onegai shimasu." _By all means, please do_.

"Tanaka-san, kochira wa LexCorp de America no Ruto desu. Kata wa uchi no sacho desu." _Mr. Tanaka, this is Mr. Luthor from LexCorp in America. He is our President_.

"Hajimemashite. Ruto desu. Watashi no meshi desu. Dozo." _Pleased to meet you. I am Luthor. Here is my card_.

"Arigato gozaimasu. Tanaka no Nippon Lexukopu desu. Hajimemashite." _Thank you. I am Tanaka of LexCorp Japan. Pleased to meet you_.

The meetings were long and boring and Lex could hardly pay attention. They didn't really need him here, but it couldn't hurt to show a personal interest in the newest LexCorp acquisition. Biotech companies in the Pacific Rim were a hot commodity and Lex was determined to make this venture successful. He refocused his attention to the projections and managed to make it through the day without thinking about what drove him here the first place. _Much_.

* * *

Back at the hotel with files on retroviral gene manipulation spread across the low table in front of him, Lex lost his focus for the last time. He couldn't stand it any longer. He rifled through the bags sent over after he arrived, tossing files, clothes and shoes haphazardly across the room until he found his prize. In the pocket of his brief case was a DVD of the security video that had caused all the upheaval in his life.

He paced the room a few times, just holding in his hand, then resolved himself. He placed the disc into the slim slot on the edge of the flat panel on the wall and watched as the screen flickered to life. He stared at Lena for a moment, paced several more laps around the room and then laid down on the bed. There was no sound, and the grainy black and white images did no justice to the exquisite beauty of the subjects, but it was all he needed.

It played out just as it had a hundred times before, and just as he had a hundred times before he made himself wait. He watched Clark go from reluctant to passionate in the blink of an eye, kiss Lena with all the love Lex would have coveted for himself. And he watched her respond. She was like a night blooming orchid, perfect and sensual and completely in love with Clark. Lex unzipped his slacks.

He tried to wait, but then he remembered the way Clark looked watching the video, flushed and aroused. And how could he not be turned on by watching himself make love to a beautiful woman? Never mind that the woman was the wife of the man he had been sitting next to, that had probably been half the fun, the forbidden, taboo part of the game. Lex was nearly as hard as he had been watching the bulge in Clark's pants swell to what had to be a painful degree.

Just a few minutes of intense stroking and Lex came whimpering on the hotel comforter. A few more minutes and he came again. The maid would probably laugh at his lack of control when she made the bed in the morning, but Lex didn't really care what the maid thought. He drank the odd tasting whiskey Fumito had bought him and passed out on top of the blankets in his dress shirt with his pants still unzipped after a third round on his second viewing of the night.

* * *

Lex walked into the stale smelling fraternity house and looked around at the writhing mass of sweaty college kids. How the hell Clark had convinced him to come to this inane party was beyond him. This had been beneath him when he was in college, not to mention now that he was an adult. Over in the corner were a group of guys huddled around a bong, but the main attraction was the raven haired boy doing tequila shots with beer chasers being cheered on by a throng of chanting frat brothers.

Clark finished a line of fifteen shots, each with a full, frothy plastic cup full of whatever crap was in the keg tonight. Lex was certain that Clark's _constitution_ was one of the main reasons a fairly dorky farm boy was one of the most popular guys in the house. Lex winced when Clark belched so loudly he could hear it across the room over the deafening house music. The frat boys cheered and raised Clark's arms like a boxing champion. Clark basked in their attention for a moment before he spotted Lex.

The blinding smile focused on him was enough to remind Lex how he had gotten himself stuck in this situation. Clark stood up with just the tiniest wobble and walked straight for him. Big arms clasped tightly around his shoulders and shook Lex just a tiny bit too hard. Clark leaned on Lex heavily and yelled into his ear.

"I'm so glad you made it. I thought you were going to ditch me again. The guys don't even believe I know you anymore. Hey guys!" Clark made big pointing gestures over Lex's head in the general direction of the brotherhood of idiots who had just been engaged in trying to give him alcohol poisoning. They yelled loudly and returned their attention to the next victim. There was no way Pete could compete with Clark's record.

Lex looked up at the stupid grin plastered on Clark's face and steeled himself for the rest of the night's _delights_.

"Do you want something to drink? There's some beer in the keg, but up in my room I have a bottle of scotch. You could have some of that." Clark looked at him hopefully.

"What and miss all the fun down here? Beer is fine." The last thing he needed was to get drunk in Clark's room. And Clark would definitely be getting him drunk if his recent antics were any indication.

Clark looked mildly crestfallen, but rushed off and returned with two disposable cups overflowing with foam before shoving one at Lex. Clark's was completely gone in one swig before Lex had finished his first tentative sip of the cheap college fare. Lex looked sourly at the distasteful stuff.

"You really should try the scotch in my room. I got it just for you. Besides, it's really stuffy down here."

"I don't think so, Clark. I have to be up early in the morning."

"Don't you even want to see my room?" _No. No he didn't. Really_.

"I've seen your room before."

"You saw my dorm room. My room here is soooo much better. You have to come see it."

"Clark, I really don't think that is a wise idea."

"Are you afraid that I'll get you drunk and take advantage of you like a helpless little girl?" _Yes, yes he was_. But the way Clark said it made it sound like the most ridiculous suggestion in the world.

"Fine. Lead the way." This was the worst idea in the history of the world, possibly the universe.

Clark gave him the ten cent tour of the frat house, culminating with the sparsely furnished room Clark shared with Pete. Lex stepped gingerly into the room after Clark swept the door open grandly like it was the finest room in the house, nay the world. The green and brown carpet looked just perfect with the piles of dirty clothes adorning it and the mountain of paper overflowing the small student desks onto the floor.

No sooner had Lex crossed the threshold than Clark slammed the door shut and Lex into the door. All at once Clark was kissing him like he needed it more than oxygen. Lex wrapped his hands in the thick hair tickling his face and yanked hard to no avail. Clark pressed his body hard into him and ground his already impressive erection into Lex's groin. Lex groaned into Clark's mouth. Clark kept kissing him and grinding into him until he stiffened against Lex and moaned deeply.

"God, Lex, I want you so much. Anything you want, please just tell me what to do," Clark whispered a bit desperately into Lex's throat.

"Fuck, Clark, this is such a bad idea. What if one of your frat brothers comes in?" The last thing he needed tonight was to get gay bashed by a drunken mob. That would look good on the front page tomorrow as he walked into the merger talks with ChemTech.

"There's a tie on the door. No one will bother us. Want you so bad." Clark fumbled with the button on Lex's slacks for a moment before yanking down the zipper with enough force to rip the pants. He blushed for a moment, but didn't let his chagrin stop him from pulling them down in one forceful tug with the silk boxers in tow.

Lex's cock didn't care about being gay bashed or the front page or anything besides Clark's hand sliding roughly up and down its length. Lex whimpered and banged his head against the door. When Clark fell to his knees in front of him, Lex gave up any pretense he had been holding onto in his own mind that he had ever had the ability to stop this. Clark's mouth was made to suck cock and who was Lex to go against god's plan?

The wet heat surrounding him was divine, but nothing compared to the suction Clark somehow continuously applied while moving his head like an old plastic bobble head attached to the dashboard of a pickup truck driving over a gravel road back in Smallville. Lex wanted to hold on, hold back, make it last longer than the blink of an eye it took to make him come down Clark's greedy throat. He wanted to, but couldn't and when he sank down the hollow core wood substitute door into a puddle in front of Clark he wished he could be strong enough to hold on, if he couldn't be strong enough to say no in the first place.

The next day he met Lena for the first time.

* * *

Lex woke up in yesterdays clothes on top of the covers with a view of the video that had been playing on continuous repeat all night and a hard-on. He made it to the shower before he touched it. It was swollen and tender and it ached and he soothed it with slippery soap up and down the throb until he was out of breath and leaning against the cold tile of the shower wall, spewing cum down the drain.

He dressed in a dark suit tailored to fit his body, but found it loose in places it used to fit snuggly. The break in the pants hung so low it caught on the bottom of his shoe. It would have to be altered soon he supposed. He tried another suit on. It didn't fit either. His belt wasn't helping either. Even synched as tight as it would go it just hung low on his hips. When exactly was the last time he ate anything? He couldn't remember. He called down to the front desk to ask for a seamstress to be sent up to cuff a pair of pants so he could at least walk with out tripping on himself. He didn't bother to ask for room service.

His meetings for the day consisted mostly of technical presentations about the use of introns in treating a range of genetic disorders, bacterial production of synthetic drugs and various organic solvents perfect for use as household cleaners. Normally the aspect he most loved about dealing with his biotech divisions was the fascinating chemistry he was privy to, but for some reason his usual zeal for discovery wasn't there. He didn't have to struggle to pay attention, he was interested, but he just didn't experience the overwhelming curiosity or enjoyment he usually derived from these meetings.

Bed was the only place he really wanted to be, but at the conclusion of the day's agenda, Tanaka and Fumito cornered him in the corridor.

"Ruto-san, shokuji o shimasho ka?" _Mr. Luthor, shall we go have dinner?_

Lex sighed. It would be bad form to decline the invitation, no matter how much he would rather be alone. "So shimasho." _Yes, lets go_.

"Nani ga ii ka ne. Nihon ryori? Sashimi mo taberaremasu ka?" _What would be good? Japanese food? Do you eat raw fish?_

"Ee, daisuki desu." _Yes, I love it_.

"Ja, sushiya e ikimasho." _So let's go to a sushi place_.

The restaurant was clearly upscale. It was beautiful and modern and Lex hated it. He didn't want food, he didn't want company and he most certainly didn't want to take off his shoes which were the only things preventing him from stepping on the cuff of his pants and having them fall off around his ankles. Not that he was opposed to having his pants around his ankles tonight, but not at the restaurant and not in front of Tanaka. Fumito, maybe, but Tanaka was too good a manager to taint like that.

Lex let the other men order an assortment of sushi large enough to feed ten men while he sipped on his tea. Apparently the men had ordered sake to go with the meal as well. He really didn't trust himself drunk in the mood he was in lately, so he attempted to eschew it in favor of more of the light green tea, but Fumito was having none of it.

"Sake wa nomimasen ka?" _You don't drink sake?_

"Cha no ho ga ii desu." _I prefer tea_.

"Ja, biru wa nomimasu ne. Sapporo o ni-hon onegai shimasu." _I see, you drink beer, yes? Two Sapporos, please_.

Beer would be all right, and Sapporo was a palatable brand. But the last time he drank sake, the night ended with him singing a particularly bad rendition of some horrible ABBA song at a karaoke bar. That was absolutely never happening again.

As it turned out there ended up being more than just the two beers ordered. In fact quite a lot more. And then sake. And then the inevitable karaoke nightmare. The paltry little bit of sushi that he actually consumed did little to dull the effects of the one kind of alcohol that had always gotten to him. There really was a reason he preferred scotch. Lex hated Fumito so much for egging him on to drink just a little more until he was pliant enough to sing "_Anata_", voice warbling like he might cry any second in front of a whole group of pleasantly tipsy businessmen. What made it so much worse was that he was getting all emotional over a girl's song.

"...anata, anata, anata ga ite hoshii. Sore ga watashi no yume data no yo. Itoshii anata wa ima doko ni?" _You, you, you I want you to be there. That was my dream. Where are you now?_

* * *

"Clark, what are you doing here?" Lex could feel Clark's breath on his neck, the heat of Clark's body on his back.

"You didn't think that little scene back at the penthouse would keep me away from you forever. We have a destiny, you and I. I know you were just trying to hurt me because you were upset."

Lex sighed and relaxed into the body spooned against him. "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. I just couldn't stand the thought of you two together anymore." Lex was too tired to make a more compelling excuse, and really it was the truth anyway.

"How long have you known?" As Clark asked, his hand snaked around Lex's belly, brushed down gently and began to stroke Lex's hopeful cock. When Lex hesitated to answer, Clark stopped the motion and Lex groaned into his pillow.

"Not very long, oh god, Clark, please don't do this to me. Fuck, I need you." God, he was so hard already and he missed Clark so much and he never thought he'd see him again after what he'd done.

"You've always been jealous of her." That was an understatement, but he didn't even let a breath go by before he answered lest Clark stop what he was doing again.

"How could I not be? Not just her, every woman you've ever been with. They got what I wanted, and you know I have a hard time sharing." Lex rolled over and kissed Clark soft and gentle, then fierce and needy as Clark sped up the rhythm of his hand. Lex matched the timing, thrust into the soft skin and hard grip, but it wasn't enough.

"She never had what you wanted." Clark dragged his thumb over the weeping slit of Lex's head and pressed the tip of his erection into Lex's belly. Lex moaned and moved into the touch.

"She had you," he whispered breathily, let tiny tracks of tears slip from the corner of his eyes onto the pillow.

"Because you wouldn't let me have what I wanted." Clark's voice sounded almost broken, coming between hot pants, lips grazing the tender shell of Lex's ear with each word, dark hair in Lex's eyes, tickling his skin.

"I always loved you." He gasped the words out like a prayer filled with the reverence reserved for soul bearing.

"I know." Clark pressed hot kisses into the delicate skin of Lex's neck, all the while continuing to stroke the engorged flesh held tight in his fist.

"I just wanted everything to stay the way it was." _Safe_.

"I couldn't wait for you forever," Clark whispered into his kisses.

"I know. But I wanted you to." There was no reason to lie now, not with Clark here, knowing everything, forgiving him, touching him half a world away from home.

"You never gave me any hope." Lex was so close, so very close and Clark changed the rhythm, sped up, slowed down, made it impossible to get just the right friction.

"I wanted you to be happy," Lex pleaded, the only thing he could do with his cock so swollen, throbbing so hard in Clark's hand.

"You have a really twisted sense of what makes me happy." Lex could hear the hurt behind the wry humor in Clark's voice.

"You would never have been happy with me. I would have hurt you." Lex willed Clark to understand, know that love only ever ended in pain with him, that he wanted something better for Clark.

"You hurt me anyway. You just didn't want me to hurt you." Clark was chiding him, the glint of anger hiding in his voice. The strokes along Lex's aching cock got harder, wetter as Clark's mouth moved to surround him and swallowed him whole. Lex thrust frantically, couldn't think anymore, knew Clark could take it, cried out as he grasped blindly for release.

"I'm so sorry, so sorry, Clark, love you so much. Always loved you. Oh, god Clark, fuck that feels so good, CLARK!" Lex opened his eyes, took in the beautiful dark mane hiding his cock and Clark's face and came screaming his name.

Fumita licked his lips clean of Lex's cum like a cat licking cream and crawled back up to press his lean body against Lex's increasingly emaciated form. He pressed another kiss to Lex's raw lips and rested his head on Lex's chest before he spoke.

"Ashita was hayai desu kara." _I have to get up early tomorrow, so I'd better get going_.

"Mo desu ka?" _Already?_

"Ashita was hayai desu kara. Chikai uchi ni shitsurei shimasu." _I have an early start tomorrow. Before too long I will have to take my leave_.

"Domo. Kochiria koso." _Thank you. Same for me_.

"Dozo yoroshiku." _The pleasure is mine_.

They lay together in the dark room somewhere between awareness and sleep for a while and Lex could almost imagine the raven haired beauty in his arms was the one in his dreams and drifted closer to sleep. Lex woke with a start when the bed shifted. Fumito padded across the room and dressed quietly while Lex watched in the grey morning light. He walked back toward Lex and kissed the skin on his brow.

"Ohayo. Sumimasen, ga honto ni ren'aichu no Kuraku desu ne." _Good morning. Pardon me, but you are truly in love with this Clark?_

"Itsumo desu." _Always_.

"Shitsurei shimasu." _It is time for me to go_.

* * *

Takahashi and Fujiki from accounting spent the morning regaling Lex with the last five years of profit and loss statements for LexCorp's Tokyo offices. They went division by division, R&amp;D of course taking most of the capitol in the short term. But they made a point of highlighting that the vast majority of profits came from two sources: the steady income of residual profits on past patents and the explosive profits of a single new cancer treatment drug approved for use in Europe and pending FDA approval in the States.

They broke for lunch late in the afternoon, during which Lex sipped lightly at cha and ate almost an entire piece of inari. The sweet tofu wrapped rice roiled in his stomach for several minutes before making a second appearance. Rice and tea and bile flowed from his mouth as he retched violently into the toilet. Lex sat in a puddle on the bathroom floor for a moment moping sweat off his scalp and brow. His head was throbbing like the techno beat of the house music Clark's frat used to play at all their parties. He hadn't had a hangover this bad in years. Sake was a very, very bad thing.

The scintillating team of accountants broke out the general ledgers once Lex had composed himself and returned to the meeting room. Fujiki and Takahashi had obviously been working together for some time, finishing each other's sentences and able to supply documentation before it was requested with prescient accuracy. Perhaps they could be used as a team to replace Watanabe as CFO. Yamamoto from the Osaka branch could replace them in their current capacity easily and would still leave Nakamura and Yamada in place. Yes, Osaka would be fine without Yamamoto and Tokyo would be better off with Watanabe elsewhere.

Lex managed to escape the crowed office to the welcoming arms of his empty hotel room without running into Fumito or Tanaka. It wasn't that he wanted to avoid them. They would of course have been gracious and not mentioned any of the activities of the previous night. But they had seen him singing karaoke. That was reason enough to be glad of their absence for at least the one day.

* * *

Clark's eyes glowed red, hot with fire held back by a thread of control. He looked wild, feral and disconcertingly dangerous when he flew through the thick frosted glass door of Lex's office. Before Lex had time to think of something soothing to say to calm him, Clark's mouth was attacking his, a hot possessive kiss he felt in the pit of his stomach, hot flames bursting in his center and spreading like wildfire through his chest and groin and limbs.

Lex was dizzy, barely able to stand without the iron grip of Clark's arms around his body. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't react to the sudden avalanche of sensation consuming him. The fierce assault of lust and passion slammed into him with enough force to displace the cold dread that filled his chest. The kiss he returned spiraled him out of control.

They ripped at each other's clothes as if the cloth could burn their flesh to the bone. They were naked and groping, grinding together like they could get closer than skin, closer than two desperate bodies separated by molecules of air and a thin layer of dermis, pressed like they could share the same body if they could just get close enough. The manic frenzy of bodies crashing together left a whirlwind of destruction in its wake; scraps of cloth, papers, books, shattered glass and broken picture frames all lay littered on the floor after Clark cleared the desk of impediments.

The sharp edge of the desk dulled under Clark's impenetrable flesh. Clark pull Lex on top of him, rutted up against him and growled, snarled and bit Lex's pale skin red and black and purple, bruises that would last for days even on Lex. Clark swore and spit Lex's name out like the filthiest curse he knew and cried out as he came hot on his belly. Lex kissed him wetly, swiped his hand through the slick mess and slathered it on his cock.

Moaning erupted from Clark's chest when Lex pressed inside him for the first time. Lex whimpered and stilled as he caught his breath, steadied his light head and thrust hard into Clark again and again, vaguely aware that the incoherent moaning bubbling out of Clark's mouth had taken form and morphed into incoherent babbling.

"Oh, Fuck, Lex, God, feels so good, fuck me Lex, love this, feels so good, so fucking good, love this, love this, love this, love you, god love you love you love you need you love you never stop love you love you so goddamn much Lex, Lex, Lex, mine, mine, mine love you love you love you LEX!" Clark screamed his name and came again, squeezing Lex's cock, wringing out a blinding orgasm.

Tears streamed from the corners of Lex's eyes as he collapsed in a heap on top of Clark's heaving chest. Clark panted and stroked his hands lazily through the sweat on Lex's back. Lex's head lolled to the side, vision hazy until he regained his focus. Directly in his line of sight, the society page of the Daily Planet lying mangled near the leg of the desk caught his gaze. The sharp half page black and white photo of Lena in an elegant black gown leaning in to kiss him in his private box at the opera with the caption "Luthor Scion in Love?" stared back at him from the floor.

* * *

Lana had that just fucked, tousled look about her and the smell of sex lingering in the air around her when Lex literally ran into her on the back stairs of the frat house. He was so surprised to see her there that for just a moment he didn't recognize her. Her hair was long and tangled in loose curls around her face and her mascara was bleeding down her face in a strangely appealing way. Her tiny skirt hugged her hips and the oversized sweater wasn't sitting quite right on her shoulders.

"Lex! What are you doing here?"

"I came to see Clark. Is he in?"

"Yeah. He's in his room."

"How have you been?"

"Oh, you know it's kind of hectic running back and forth here practically every weekend. I really love living in Smallville, but all the trips to Metropolis really add up."

"Are you taking a class or are you coming up especially to see Clark and Pete and your other friends?"

"No, no class. It's just lonely in Smallville without them, you know?"

"Yes, I do. Clark is a hard guy to replace."

"Well, it's nice to see you, Lex, but I have to get back to Smallville before my shift at ten. I'm sure I'll run into you again soon."

"Always a pleasure to see you, Lana." Lex inclined his head and moved aside to let Lana past.

"Bye."

Lex watched Lana walk to her car, the first light of dawn adding orange highlights to her shiny black hair. She shivered as she sat down in the driver's seat. She waved bye to him through the windshield and pulled out of the cramped lot behind the large house. The frat had a larger lot a block away used mostly for parties, but she must have gotten here early last night to get so close. Cheap college A to B cars mingled with yuppie late model hybrids all up and down the street. Lex had elected to part several blocks away to avoid potential damage to his paint job when last night's party goers woke and sobered enough to drive home.

The stairs seemed steeper this morning. His chest felt tight and he resolved to spend more time at his cardiovascular routine. Lex mounted the landing and entered the narrow hall that led to the third story bedrooms housing Clark and Pete. He rounded the corner and reached for the doorknob currently sporting the hideous green and brown tie Clark wore to annoy him when they went out. He froze. He could feel the fabric of his shirt pressing down painfully on the purple and yellow ring of bruises on his neck. The cold dread that had been momentarily displaced two days ago in the mess of his office returned with enough force to numb him with the chill.

A groggy bed headed Clark emerged from the doorway wearing a pair of red cotton boxers and white tube socks before Lex regained his equilibrium enough to enter. The toothbrush clutched in Clark's hand fell to the floor when Clark bumped into him. Lex was still unable to move, but the sound of Clark's voice snapped him out of it.

"Hey, Lex. What're you doing here?"

"I thought we could get some breakfast, but if you have other plans I can go."

"Mmmm, breakfast. Where do you want to go? There's this great diner about five blocks from here. We can walk over as soon as I get dressed. You want to wait in my room or hang downstairs in the library?"

"Tough decision, cramped ratty pit or clean room filled with books. I'll see you downstairs in what ten minutes?"

"Yeah. I'm really glad you came over this morning."

* * *

The sound of the door opening and light spilling into the room from the hallway woke Lex from the impromptu nap he had taken on the top of the bed after removing his jacket and tie. He was so damn tired. The thick aroma of food wafted to his nose and curdled his stomach. He ran to the bathroom to heave the paltry contents of his stomach into the sink, wiped his mouth off with a hand towel and walked back out into the suite to investigate.

A beautiful petite girl was ladling miso soup into a deep bowl, the thin broth the source of the smell. She proceeded to pour cha and cracked a raw egg over the steaming oyako. Lex watched her prepare the meal for him with a pleasing economy of motion. He let her finish her tasks before she bowed and left..

Lex picked up the bowl of thin miso soup, sipped and drank about half of it down before calling her back to come and remove the rest of the food. The salty broth stayed down, for which he was grateful, but he wasn't about to chance anything else today. He wasn't hungry anyway.

He knew he hadn't ordered anything before he collapsed on the bed when he got back from the office. The only logical explanation was Fumito. Lex picked up the phone.

"Moshi moshi, Fumito desu." _Hello, this is Fumito_.

"Fumito-san, Ruto desu. Goghiso-sama deshita. Kizukai itadaite, sumimasen." _Fumito, it's Luthor. Thank you very much for the delicious meal. You are so considerate, you didn't have to do that_.

"A, Ruto-san, watashi wa tabareremasu ne, mimasu." _Ah, Mr. Luthor, I see you can eat_.

"Sewa ni narishimashita. Mata, chikai uchi ni aimasho." _I'm indebted to your kindness. I'd like to see you again soon_.

"De wa, anata wa mitad n'desu. Sugu e anata no beddo kaeritai n'desu." _Well then, I'd like to see you. I'd like to return to your bed_.

"Isogeba ii n'desu." _You should hurry_.

"Matte ne." _See you soon_.

* * *

Lex was beginning to doubt his sanity again. His fantasies were getting so much more vivid, real. Fumito was sucking him in the huge bed when his head rolled to the side. Clark standing there, eyes hot and cock hard in his hand. Their eyes locked. Clark was stroking himself in time with Fumito's bobbing head and Lex's involuntary thrusts up into the wet heat. Lex moaned. Clark kept jacking himself, pace furious and erratic now and if Lex ever saw pain in anyone's eyes it was Clark's as he came all over his hand.

And then Lex was alone in the room again, dick spewing cum down Fumito's throat, eyes raw with unshed tears, hands clenched in silky black hair, lungs heaving air out his mouth to scream Clark's name.

* * *

One Wednesday morning in the middle of May a man in a brown suit walked up to Lex on the street. There was nothing threatening about the man. He was 5'6", medium build, and had dirty blond hair. His shoes were worn and scuffed. His left hand sported a dull gold wedding band.

"Lex Luthor?"

"Yes. And who are you?"

"Willie Hall. You've been served."

Lex looked down at the blue and white document in his hands as the man walked away. Another lawsuit. His brother was probably suing for more of their father's assets, but it would be no use. Lionel had had the best lawyers money could buy and he made sure that the irrevocable trust was all that Lucas could touch. He unfolded the papers, read the top page and dropped the entire thing on the ground.

_Petition for Divorce_.

_No Fault. Incompatibility. Irreconcilable Differences_.

_Equitable Distribution of Marital Assets. Spousal Support_.

*Petitioner: Lena L. Luthor*

*Respondent: Alexander J. Luthor*

* * *

Lex sat in his dark office drinking and wracking his brain, trying to figure out what the hell had happened. It was so random. So completely out of the blue. There had been no fight, no attempted murder, no betrayal that he could think of. At least on his part. He had never been unfaithful, never given in to the temptation that was Clark's continued presence in his life, though he could taste his desire for Clark in the back of his mouth every day like dark chocolate, a bittersweet craving. He was a doting husband. There was no reason for her to leave him. Had she simply lost faith in him? Did she finally agree with everyone else about him?

Was there someone else?

Someone else. Yes, that had to be it. But who? Lena flirted with everyone in a charming, totally fake way. Had she ever actually flirted with anyone? She flirted to get what she wanted. She flirted to distract. She flirted to soothe people in awkward situations. But none of it was real. Had it been real when she did it with him? Almost certainly not. She had known what she wanted from the beginning and it was Lex's power, his money, his destiny. None of that had changed. It had to be another man.

When Clark walked in Lex had been there for hours. He hadn't slept. He hadn't eaten. He was wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing yesterday, rumpled and stinking of sweat and alcohol. He was drunk and sullen and not fit company but he was too upset to care. He was obsessed. He was making lists of everyone that Lena could possibly be sleeping with. Lists of business associates, politicians, casual acquaintances, even bored society wives she spent time with because he was smart enough not to assume anything. He was trying to remember if anything had changed recently in her behavior towards him so that he could pinpoint the timeframe that the interloper cuckolded him.

"God, Lex, what's going on? You look terrible. You haven't been like this since your dad died."

"She left me. Why did she do that, Clark? What's wrong with me? I know I'm obsessive and distant and a freak but I've been like that since before she met me. It's not like I changed or something. I think there is another man. Or maybe another woman. I'm going to find out who the fucking bastard who has been fucking my wife is and then I am going to destroy their goddamn life." Lex snarled it like a particularly rabid dog. There was even a feral glint in his eyes.

Clark blanched. He never did have the stomach for Lex's world. This betrayal demanded retribution and not even the sick look on Clark's face was going to be enough to stop him this time. Clark could be disappointed all he wanted. Lex reigned in his desire to rip the throat out of who ever it was when he noticed how pale his friend was.

"I won't hurt them, if that's what you're worried about Clark. Not physically, anyway." Lex continued his erratic pacing around the confining room. A thought hit him between the eyes suddenly. "You spend a lot of time with Lena, Clark."

Clark looked like he was going to vomit. He knew. He knew who it was and he knew it was happening and he hadn't told Lex, had just let him be blindsided by the bitch. Knowing Clark he was probably trying to protect the betraying parties from Lex's wrath. Well, he'd give him an opportunity to come clean, redeem himself.

"Do you have any idea who it might be?"

Clark made the pinched face that meant he was going to take Lex's out and lie to him yet again. "No, Lex. I don't. Maybe there isn't anyone. Maybe she's just a stupid bitch who was never worth your time in the first place."

"Maybe you're right, Clark. Why don't you go into the media room and watch a movie while I have a shower. I smell like shit. We'll go get something to eat."

The moment Clark left the room, Lex got on the phone with his _security_ department. Clark knew something and he wasn't going to tell Lex. But Lex needed to know and if Clark wouldn't tell him directly then his phone conversations would. It wouldn't be any problem at all tapping the line. Not with his contacts.

* * *

"Ruto-san, denwa desu yo. Kata wa ne America desu." _Mr. Luthor, there is a call for you. He is from America_. Fumito's disembodied voice through the speaker phone startled Lex for a second.

"Domo, Fumito-san." _Thank you, Fumito_. Lex reached down and picked up the line. "Lex Luthor."

"Mr. Luthor, this is Damien from security." Damien. Damien. Lex couldn't quite place which security detail Damien was in charge of. It didn't matter. They would fix whatever it was before he returned.

"Damien, I am in Tokyo. I am about to leave the office. Is there something that cannot wait until I return?" He began gathering the papers he would need tonight and putting them into his briefcase.

"I thought you would want to know right away that Mr. Kent is currently in Mrs. Luthor's hotel room." Fuck. Damien was in charge of Lena's security. That fucking bitch.

"Former Mrs. Luthor. As soon as Mr. Kent leaves the building I want you to get that bitch on the line for me." It could be a long wait. A really long wait if the video he had back at the hotel was anything to go by. And what if Clark slept there?

"Yes, sir." Damien sounded nervous but Lex didn't care. He hung up the phone, dialed his emergency office number back in Metropolis and woke his personal secretary up.

"Peter if you are calling for money, I swear to god I am going to hurt you. It's 2 o'clock in the morning." He would almost laugh if he wasn't so mad.

"Sheila, I need you to get my attorney on the phone immediately and patch her through to my number in Tokyo."

"What? Mr. Luthor? Sorry, I thought you were my son. Which attorney?" She sounded groggy at first but was alert quickly.

"Anita Ryan." Lex continued to pack his things up for the night as he spoke.

"Your divorce lawyer?"

"Yes."

"Did you get married again, sir?"

"No. Just get her on the phone for me as soon as possible."

"Yes, sir. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"No, just get Anita on the line for me."

"Everything alright, Mr. Luthor?"

"It'll be fine. Good night."

Lex paced back and forth in the borrowed office. Everyone was already leaving the office for the day and he had nothing to distract himself with. It had been years since he had had anger management issues bad enough to trash an office but he was hanging on by a thread. He picked up a glass paperweight, felt the heft of it in his hand and contemplated throwing it at the wall. He replaced it on the corner of the desk. For a brief moment he considered calling Fumito back into the room for a quick blowjob under the desk to relieve stress before thinking better of it.

Maybe once he was a little calmer he would be able to think about this without wanting to smash that fucking cunt's head in with a shovel but he wasn't sure. It was probably good that they were separated by an ocean and half the landmass of North America. He heard the shattering glass of the paperweight hitting the doorframe before he realized he had thrown it.

"Ruto-san, denwa desu yo. Anita Rian desu." _Mr. Luthor, you have a call. It's Anita Ryan_.

"Domo." _Thank you_. He pushed the flashing light on the phone and picked up the handset. "Anita?"

"Yes, Lex. What do you need? You do know it's 3 o'clock in the morning here, right?"

"I want that bitch cut off from every goddamned cent of my money."

"Lena? I thought you wanted that money in trust for her."

"She broke the terms of our agreement and I want to fucking kill her but I am going to settle for making her get a fucking job. I don't want anything to do with her ever again. I want you to destroy her. I want her to have to take a job as a fucking maid scrubbing toilets at her country club. I want her to be humiliated and degraded and I want every fucking dime I ever gave her back."

"Whoa. You know I like to destroy people's lives as much as the next gal, but I am going to need to know exactly what she did."

"She fucked Clark."

"I see. Do you have proof? What am I saying of course you have proof. I am assuming that you mean during the time of your marriage."

"No. Yes. She did sleep with him while we were married."

"Was this the direct cause of the divorce?"

"Yes. She left me to be with him."

"And you just got this information?"

"Not exactly."

"By not exactly you mean that this is the thing that you used to hold over her head in the divorce to get her to play nice for the media and make you come out looking like a great guy who can't catch a break with women while not giving her any portion of your marital assets beyond alimony."

"Yes."

"And you are in a psychotic frenzy about this now because..."

"She fucked Clark."

"We already covered this, Lex."

"It was part of our agreement when we divorced that should she ever contact him again I would release the information to the media and withdraw her generous alimony payments."

"Aha. So she fucked Clark recently."

"She is fucking him _right now_. In the lovely hotel that I am fucking paying for. Anita, I hate that bitch and I want you to hurt her."

"No problem. I was actually very surprised by the amicable nature of your divorce at the time. I mean, why hire a ball breaker like me if you weren't going to be breaking any balls so to speak? Send me all the documentation. And your surveillance. Everything you've got."

"I'll have Sheila courier it to you."

"Okay. I assume since you got me up you want me to do this now. I'll have her begging for change on the corner of State and Colfax by the end of the week."

"I love you."

"I know."

"Marry me?"

"Not a chance."

"You break my heart, Anita."

"Poor baby. I'll call you tomorrow."

Lex dropped the phone into the cradle and leaned back into the leather office chair. He felt a little more relaxed now that he knew Anita would take care of things, less like he needed to strangle someone. He sent off a quick e-mail to Sheila, collected his things and went back to the hotel. Alone.

He started taking off his clothes as soon as he entered the suite. His tie felt to the floor first, then he toed off his shoes, dropped his jacket on the back of a chair and discarded his cufflinks on the bedside table. He hit the play button on the remote before he started unbuttoning his shirt. He left his pants in a puddle of wool at the foot of the bed. The slippery silk boxers landed a bit to the left of the shirt on the edge of the bed.

The grey images of Clark and Lena fucking like porn stars on the plasma panel across from the bed were exponentially more arousing knowing that at that very moment half way around the world Clark and Lena were making another video for him. Clark was probably sucking on her breast just like that right now. Or maybe he was licking her pussy or she could be sucking him off. Right now. Clark was fucking Lena right now.

Lex groaned and arched his back as his fingers worked his painfully swollen dick. He knew every minute of this footage intimately. He knew exactly what it felt like to have Clark thrusting inside you just like he was thrusting inside Lena on the tape and _God_ in the Metropolis Plaza Suites penthouse. His body remembered what it felt like to have that pretty mouth on him, that thick cock inside him, that sweet ass around him. Lex whimpered and came hot across his belly.

He ran his fingers through the sticky mess for a minute before he got up and took a shower. When he slid between the sheets naked he shivered. It was cold in the bed. Clark was warm wrapped around him in his memories. He wondered if Clark was sleeping spooned around that traitorous bitch right now. He drifted off to sleep trying to remember why he married that whore in the first place.

* * *

Lex stopped the frantic groping he and Clark were engaged in on the couch in the media room. He took Clark by the hand and pulled him to the door of the master bedroom. His bedroom. Where they had never been before, somehow too intimate for Lex to tolerate. But tonight he wanted to make love to Clark in his own bed.

"Lex?" Clark hesitated at the threshold. He looked panicky when his huge eyes met Lex's.

"Come to bed Clark." Lex returned the shocked stare with a leer.

"Oh, god," Clark groaned.

"Not yet. Let me make love to you and then you can call me god." Lex laid himself out on the bed in as enticing a manner as possible.

"You love me?" Clark looked stunned and hopeful and afraid all at once, but he walked to the bed and crawled up to kiss Lex deeply.

"You're my best friend, Clark. I wouldn't know what to do without you." It was true, and it was the worst lie he ever told.

Lena was the perfect woman. She was smart and beautiful and charming. The way she wore her clothes, the way she styled her hair, the way she moved, it all entranced him. But the singular quality that exuded the most draw for Lex was her normality. She was an affable, stable society girl with no anger management issues, burning secrets or haunted past. The perfect wife for a business man, or a politician.

She was also ambitious. One night early on in their relationship Lena had confessed to her deepest desire. She wanted to be the First Lady. Which worked out nicely because Lex had a destiny and it included the White House. She wanted to be with him because she believed he would be President one day. No one but Clark had ever believed in him that way, and the loss of that belief had hit him hard. He had found her confession extremely arousing and he took her to bed for the first time that night.

The public loved her. The society rags all adored her. Issues with photos of Lex with Lena on his arm sold like hotcakes. The gossip columnists whispered about their engagement before Lex even asked her to marry him. The PR department at LexCorp was all in a flutter about the storm of free publicity the couple generated.

Lex's business associates found her to be charming and delightful. She could work a room like nobody's business. Her business and political contacts from Vassar were an invaluable asset. Her family had political pull in the East Coast; her father had been a senator for the past 18 years. Even his father approved of the lovely young woman.

In fact the only person who didn't love her the first time they met her was Clark. Which wasn't terribly surprising. What was surprising and cinched the deal was that for all Clark's trying, he found absolutely nothing against her. Nothing sinister, nothing she had not already disclosed, not even a reasonable plot to kill him and take all his money. Even Clark couldn't say she was a gold digger. She wanted the power more than she ever wanted the money.

He might have tried explaining all that to Clark except that then they would have to talk about why he and Clark could never be together. And Lex really didn't want to talk about that. Not about Clark's immaturity or inevitable loss of interest in him. Not about Lex's terror that Clark would completely consume him and leave him nothing but a burnt out pile of ash in the end.

And certainly not about Lana. He most emphatically did not want to talk about her sleeping arrangements on her weekly overnight visits to the frat, or the pink toothbrush next to Clark's in his toiletries basket, or the two foot long black hair Lex found on his sweater one night after they actually made it too the tiny twin bed covered in laundry. Lex was glad Clark was such a _gentleman_ when it came to talking about Lana, because if he had to hear about the beauty of making love to someone you really love and how glad he was that he had lost his virginity to that whore he was going to need a heart transplant.

So, instead he made love to Clark for the last time and held him tight in his arms and whispered his love into the ear of his sleeping soul mate. He told Clark how he had been in love with him forever, that he couldn't remember a time that he had known Clark and hadn't loved him. He let tears stream down his face as he told Clark about the agony that shot through his heart whenever he thought about giving him up. Lex even told the secret he promised Lana never to tell. And in the morning, he asked Clark to be his best man.

* * *

Lex should have expected the abrupt return of Clark's slut phase, or continuation with out him or whatever, but he hadn't and so it came as something of a shock to him when he walked into Clark's room at the frat to find him fucking the stripper who had just finished entertaining the bachelor party. His bachelor party. The bachelor party Clark had insisted on throwing. Clark was fucking the stripper who had not ten minutes ago been picking a dollar bill off Lex's face with her ass cheeks.

He just stood there with the door open staring at Clark and the stripper with the incredibly large tits until Clark yelled.

"What the fuck, Lex? Are you blind? Didn't you see the tie on the door? Either get in here and take your goddamned clothes off or get the fuck out."

For some reason he hadn't noticed the tie on the door. There was always a tie on that door, wasn't there? Lex tried to remember if he had ever seen the doorknob without the tie on it. He couldn't quite remember. It had taken three months before Lex felt he could trust himself to be alone with Clark again so he hadn't been around the frat much lately. Which was _fine_. He was busy with Lena and the wedding plans and he still saw Clark, just only in public or with Lena.

Three months and he had been so good, hadn't even jacked off to memories of Clark for a month and everything was _fine_. But it was his bachelor party and the frat boys had gotten him drunk. Very drunk and he was horny and Clark was right there and he wanted it so badly. But the stripper was right there, too, and so Lex mumbled an apology and slammed the door on his way out.

He wanted to go home and drink until he passed out. But he was hard and drunk and he couldn't go anywhere like this. How ever much the sight of that big boobed bimbo in bed with his Clark had sobered him, he knew he couldn't drive. And he couldn't go downstairs with his pants tented like this. The frat boys would write it off to that fucking peroxide skank that had been writhing in his lap, but they wouldn't let it go. They would fuck with him about it until his driver arrived to take him home. But even that prospect couldn't compete with his body's reaction to seeing Clark naked for the first time in months.

So he called for a car to come pick him up on his cell from the bathroom and promptly broke his streak. He couldn't stop himself. He couldn't have stopped himself had he been downstairs with all the drunken college boys. His dick ached and throbbed and every goddamned time he had fucked Clark or sucked him or let Clark do whatever the fuck he wanted was flooding back into his mind with the force of a tsunami.

Their first kiss, frantic hand jobs in the men's room at Clark's favorite pizza place, Clark's naked back underneath his chest as he fucked him against the wall, the taste of Clark's cum hot on his tongue, the feel of Clark's cock slamming inside him, that first desperate fuck on the desk, Clark's mouth on his neck, his nipples, his dick. Clark's eyes dilated with lust, lips red and swollen from kissing, skin flushed after sex. Lex couldn't stop the barrage of images any more than he could stop his hand on his dick.

When he finally came he had to bite his fist hard not to call out for Clark, scream his name like Clark could save him. He didn't bother to wipe the sticky, white substance off the wall of the filthy bathroom. One more stain would make absolutely no difference in the grand scheme of things and his driver would be here by now. He cleaned himself up a bit before returning downstairs to the mob of rowdy, inebriated assholes Clark spent most of his time with now.

* * *

The ringing phone woke him.

"Moshi moshi. Ruto desu." _Hello, this is Luthor_.

"International call for Mr. Luthor."

"This is Luthor. Put the call through please." Lex scrubbed his hand over his face and blinked his eyes blearily during the momentary pause as he waited for the call to come through.

"Lex you son of a bitch, what the hell is this?" The shrill voice screeching at him from the receiver was enough to jolt the rest of the sleep from his system.

"Lena. So nice of you to call." He infused the greeting with all the sarcasm he could muster.

"Tell this goon to let go of me or I am filing a harassment suit." He snorted. He could just picture the bulky man dragging her to the phone. It was actually quite a satisfying image.

"Damien, you may let go of her, now. But really, Lena, I don't think you're going to be in any position to file anything. Well, you do have office skills. You might actually be spending some quality time filing in the near future. In fact if I were you I might start looking for work as soon as we get off the phone." He was amazed that his voice was so steady. Like he wasn't even upset, or angry. It was the same tone of voice that he used for business lunches, even and calm with just the tiniest hint of arrogance.

"What are you talking about?" Her voice was low and quiet and it warbled a bit at the end.

"You broke our agreement and now I'm exercising my option to cut off your trust. You'll need a job if you don't want to move back in with Daddy." He wasn't even angry anymore, just relieved to finally be able to rid himself of her.

"I didn't break any agreement, you slimy bastard, and you know it." Lex sighed. He was tired and he didn't want to listen to her lie to him again. Their marriage had been long enough to use up every lie he could tolerate from her.

"I beg to differ, and I have video surveillance to prove it." He glanced at the panel on the wall across the room, watched for a moment as Lena bounced up and down in Clark's lap before turning away.

"But you told me to do it! You can't just call me up and tell me to call Clark and do whatever I want with him and then hold it against me when I do. That's entrapment, you prick." She was trying to control herself, he could tell, but she wasn't doing a spectacular job. She sounded desperate and angry and afraid.

"I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about tonight in your hotel room. It was a one time deal, and you knew it." His eyes wandered back to the screen, but he willed himself not to get hard.

"Can I help it if he can't get enough of me?" Lena on the screen was limp and murmuring something, but porn star Clark was still thrusting up into her.

"Save it. I saw the tape; I don't need a first hand account from you." He didn't need to hear how Clark had told her he loved her, or how much he missed her or anything else Lena might see fit to divulge to get a reaction.

"It's not like you care who I sleep with. You were never in love with me in the first place. You got so much sympathy from everyone with your little dramatic breakdown after I left you, but it was never about me. You even conned Clark into believing it was about me, but I know better. I knew you were in love with someone else from the very beginning. It's not like I ever loved you, either. I knew what I was getting into."

"What do you mean, _I was in love with someone else?_" He felt a chill skitter down his spine.

"Do you really think I'd marry you with out finding out everything there was to know about your love life? I know about the other wives, of course, how could I not? But I am nothing if not thorough. I looked into everyone from your past, and unlike everyone else on the planet I never believed you could bear to spend all that time exiled in the middle of nowhere for anything less than love. You're completely obsessive. It was the only explanation for you voluntarily staying there that made any sense.

I knew the first time I saw you look at Clark with Lana. He was with her, instead of you. It killed you. You looked like you had just lost your one true love, like you were in pain. You practically oozed jealousy out of every pore in your body. I never saw you give so much a way in a single look. And the sexual tension! I can't imagine how everyone in Smallville didn't know, though they do seem to have an unnatural willingness to ignore the obvious if it suits their purposes.

You're a sucker for purity and goodness. I bet you ate up all that small town naivete. And I can only imagine the thrill you got from being able to give someone the benefits of all your money who didn't just expect it like everyone in Metropolis, or your gold digging, homicidal ex-wives. And it's not like it didn't all come in an attractive package, all dark hair and smooth skin, pink lips and pretty eyes. You definitely have a type, Lex.

I know she's why you married me. She went back to Clark, and you couldn't stand the thought of them together so you got married."

"You think I was in love with Lana Lang?" The words fell out of his mouth before he could think better of it.

"Oh, come on Lex! You bought the girl a coffee shop in the middle of nowhere. You sent her to Paris and then followed her there. Do you really expect me to believe that she left your bed the entire month you were there with her? She'd already dropped out of that pathetic attempt at art school. You probably thought she loved you, too, when she let you take her virginity.

But then what does she do as soon as she gets back home? Runs straight back to her _true love_, Clark. You really should have read some of the abominable poetry the girl posted on the internet. She thought he was some kind of angel. You stole her from him and then he stole her right back. They went to the prom together. It's absolutely precious. And don't bother to tell me that it didn't wrench your insides out just to think about what they did afterward.

You and Clark have been competing over women ever since. When I got rid of that little princess, which you should thank me for by the way, the first thing he did was try to take me away from you. And the minute I left you he lost all interest. All he wanted from me was to hurt you the way you hurt him with that little Lang tramp. Or should I say, Ross tramp? How does it feel to have lost her to the short sidekick that hates your guts?

And now it's your turn. You want revenge, for stealing the girl, then your wife. He's finally gotten over his first love and moved on to a real woman. It wouldn't have been a challenge to take away someone he didn't really care about, so you waited for him to fall in love again. And then you used me to get rid of the new girl. He was about to ask her to marry him, but you already knew that. That's why you called me when you did.

Tell me, Lex. Did you sleep with her, too? Of course you did. You probably even set it up so he'd see it. Wouldn't be nearly satisfying enough for you to be the only one that knew you won the game.

So you see, I know all your secrets, too. You can hold mine over my head all you want, but I know you. I know every competitive, jealous, revenge craving bone in your body. That's why we were so good together."

"So good together that you had to fuck my best friend behind my back during the majority of our marriage."

"I loved him. I know you couldn't possibly understand that, but I did. I do. I can't help it. I love him. But not to worry, he still only wants me so long as it hurts you."

"I understand better than you think." Lex paused and then asked the only question he had left in him. "Was it worth it?"

"Being in his arms again, kissing him, seeing the love wash over his face, feeling him inside me one last time? I can't imagine anything better, except perhaps not knowing it was all an illusion. If I had thought for a moment that it was real I would never have let him go no matter what you threatened to do to me."

Lex was suddenly overcome with pity for her. She'd never had him, either, no matter what it looked like. She'd been replaced just as surely as he'd been, too. He felt an odd kinship with her, this other person who had been destroyed by their love for the same man. And he had been destroyed. He hadn't been the same at all since he found out Clark had been the one to betray him. It had ruined him for years and by the time he had regained some semblance of normalcy, Clark had fallen in love with Lois and only looked at Lex to pity him.

The familiar rush of jealousy for Lois, who had really had Clark, who Clark had wanted to marry, hell, who Clark probably still wanted to marry, threatened to drown him in the next breath. Downing a glass of whisky seemed like a good idea, as did hanging up the phone.

"Goodbye, Lena. I trust that we won't ever have occasion to speak again."

"Whatever, Lex."

Pressing the button to disconnect the phone was satisfying in a visceral way, ending not only the call, but also his entire connection to that part of his life. Relief mingled with the strangling sensation of envy in an entirely unpleasant way. The burn of the alcohol numbed the overwhelming mixture of emotions, so he drank another glass, and another, and another until he didn't care anymore.

Somewhere along the line Lex decided that he never wanted to see that damned video again. He had seen it one too many times, and he couldn't stand it any more, so he picked up the lamp on the bed side table and used the blunt end to smash the plasma screen TV on the wall that had been playing the disc for hours. The liquid crystals bled down the still-playing images of Clark and Lena after the first blow, but he kept hitting it until the delicate plastic ripped and it shorted out.

It wasn't enough, though. The pictures had stopped, but his rage hadn't. The inoperable machine still held within its core the disk burned with the footage of Clark that night in the hotel Lex had paid for, with the woman he had sent to ruin his best friend's life. He pried the thing open with pens stamped with the hotel logo until he could reach the damning evidence. He shattered the disk into smaller and smaller pieces until they would not break any smaller.

Still, he wasn't satisfied, the catharsis of wrecking the television and the recording not sufficient to assuage the anger built up inside him. He shattered the mirror in the bathroom and the one in the sitting room of the suite, and the sound was perfect, like chimes or bells. The tintinnabulation of the breaking glass soothed him momentarily, but when the mirrors were lying in shards on the floor, the sound stopped and he moved on to picture frames and tumblers and light bulbs until the floor was littered with sharp, shiny fragments nearly everywhere he stepped. Life would have been complete if he could just fall through another glass table, but sadly there wasn't one in the suite.

His feet and hands were covered in a patchwork of cuts and scrapes, some still housing slivers of glass, but he was numb to the pain. Blood stained his cuffs and a gash on his forehead dribbled dark crimson, coagulating drops down one side of his face. He couldn't remember feeling this enraged and impotent all at once since his time at Belle Reve. Emotions that had been simmering under his skin for a decade boiled over and consumed him.

A talon sized piece of the bathroom mirror clenched tightly in his left hand served as a knife when he began shredding the upholstery and linens in the once beautiful suite of rooms. The noise the fabric made when he ripped it was better even than the shattering glass had been. He noticed that he was bleeding when he became dizzy, and wrapped his hand in strips of the 1000 thread count sheets he had just attacked.

Rock stars or drugged out celebrities often trashed their hotel rooms if the media was to be believed, but they would likely all be shocked by the destruction levied on the accommodations by an uptight billionaire businessman, even with the reputation earned as a wild child in his youth. It was freeing in some respects, and he felt empty of the anger and resentment and bitterness and guilt and even the passion and the love that had so filled him before, and finally even the mania that had fueled his little rampage.

He lay still, unconscious on the remains of the bed when the maid found him the next morning.

* * *

Warmth infused him, despite the cold appearance of the place. Bright white light came from every direction, edges of things fuzzy, or perhaps that was just his brain. It didn't smell like a hospital, or really anything at all. It was a safe place, he was sure, and so there was no need to investigate further.

"Clark?" Lex whispered, not wanting to defile the precious silence of the place with raised voices, but completely confident that Clark would in fact be there. Clark was always there to save him from himself, wasn't he?

"Lex," Clark responded, his beautiful face suddenly completely filling Lex's field of vision.

"I knew you'd be here," Lex stated calmly. He reached his hand out and caressed Clark's face for a second before Clark leaned in to kiss him.

A whimper came from Clark before he was kissing Lex back. The kiss was all tenderness and love and all the things that Lex had always wanted their first kiss to be, with none of the sloppiness and desperate groping that he remembered. A well of happiness bubbled up inside him and he sighed contentedly. The kiss ended and he pulled back to look into Clark's eyes.

They were shiny, a film of unshed tears obscuring the ethereal beauty of them, though they were always a watery mix of blue and green. Lex brushed his thumb across one of Clark's sharp, high cheekbones and pressed their foreheads together. He could feel the flutter of Clark's eyelashes on his face and the wetness of a few escaped droplets on his skin.

"I missed you," he confessed softly to Clark. His fingers skittered down Clark's ribs, causing Clark's breath to hitch.

Clark wrapped his arms around Lex and held on tight to him, his body slightly shuddering while he whispered, "I'm so sorry, Lex," over and over like a mantra.

It didn't phase Lex at all when he realized that they were floating. He simply wrapped his fingers in Clark's hair, still as soft as the first time he felt it, and pet him and made little shushing noises like he remembered his mother making when he was a child having an asthma attack. One of his hands strayed down Clark's body and rubbed soft circles into the small of his back.

Lex whispered into Clark's hair and pressed kisses to his forehead, "Shhh, it's okay, everything is going to be okay. Shhh, I forgive you, it's okay."

It must have been the right thing to do, because Clark quieted and the shaking stopped, but the arms surrounding him remained and Lex was fine with that. He continued to kiss Clark's face and run his fingers through the dark black locks.

"I love you." Lex had never heard those words out of Clark's mouth unmarred by breathy pants gasped out during sex, stealing its meaning. The sound was perfect, clear and imbued with all the actual sentiments of the statement, not lust, just love and affection and regard and just how Lex had always imagined it.

"I love you, too. I've always loved you." It felt so right to say it back, no question in any part of his being that it was true. It was the simplest truth Lex knew, had always known, he'd always loved the man wrapping him up in his body. He couldn't even remember with any clarity a time when he hadn't loved Clark. It was one of the great constants of his adult life; his father would never love him and he would never stop loving Clark.

He had loved Clark when Clark was in love with Lana, when Clark mistrusted him, lied to him, failed to save him when he needed it, when Clark wouldn't speak to him, even when Clark had declared their friendship over, Lex had loved him. And then later on when Clark had used his body and broken his heart, Lex had loved him then, too.

There were also other times that he had loved Clark. When Clark gave him his friendship in spite of what everyone said, not asking for anything but his friendship in return. All the times that Lex had made bad decisions that affected other people, Clark had told him he wasn't his father until Lex had believed it. And nearly every time Lex had needed saving, Clark had been there to do the saving. No matter what else had been going on in Clark's life, he had made time for Lex, even when the other things were more important. Clark had been kind to Lex as often or more than he had hurt him. Lex had loved Clark all those times, too.

He wasn't in love with an angel, but not a devil either. Which worked out well, since Lex himself was something in between. Even with all his faults, or maybe because of them, Clark was perfect just the way he was. Lex wouldn't change a single thing about him. Euphoria unlike anything he'd ever experienced washed through him.

Everything seemed so simple. He loved Clark and Clark loved him. In that moment of clarity nothing else mattered, not the lies or betrayals or any other obstacle, only that they were in love. So he kissed Clark, at first with all the purity of true love and then again, this time with all the heat and desire and longing coiled in the pit of his stomach.

Clark returned his kisses with every bit as much emotion. Lex could feel the need and want and fire wafting off Clark's body as he pressed into him. It should have been too much, too close, too hard, but it wasn't. A kiss like this might have shattered something inside him another time, but there was nothing left to break now.

They made love with their lips and then with their bodies, soft caresses and hard strokes, never knowing where one body ended and the other began. It wasn't about getting to orgasm, though they did; it was about touching the parts of each other that only belonged to them and no one else. It felt sacred, consecrated and pure, and though there would be no physical markings of possession afterward, there would be no mistaking the marks left on their souls.

* * *

"Ruto-san, mizu o nomeba ii n'desu." _Mr. Luthor, you should drink some water_.

Fumito knelt by the ripped bed and placed a cold glass of water in his hands and brought it up to Lex's lips before he knew what was going on. The frigid liquid hit his stomach a split second before he retched it all up again. The light was too bright and the sound of broken glass grinding underfoot was so loud. How could he wake from such a beautiful dream into such a fucking nightmare?

He made a move to sit up and take stock of his surroundings, but a hand pressed him back onto the bed. "Matte ba ii n'desu." _You should wait_.

It was probably very good advice, but he rarely listened to good advice and this was no exception. He propped himself up on his elbows and looked around at the destruction he had wrought on the room. There would have to be bribes, possibly many bribes, to keep this quiet.

"Ima wa nanji desu ka?" _What time is it?_ Lex needed to know how many people were privy to his current situation. Would everyone be missing him at the office? God. He just wanted to close his eyes and be back in his dreams again, but barring that, he wanted to go home. He would need to wrap everything up here before he could do that.

"Ni-ji han desu." *It's 2:30*. Lex groaned, but Fumito continued. "Ogenki desu ka?" _How are you feeling?_

Lex wanted to snort, or say something rude like "Oki na o-sewa da," _None of your bloody business_ or even tell the truth and say, "Byoki desu," _I'm sick,_ but instead he screwed up his courage, sat all the way up despite the vertigo that threatened him and said, "Genki desu." _I'm fine_.

Fumito looked skeptical but nodded and began rapidly barking orders at the various other people in the room, who scurried off to take care of things. Within minutes the floor was swept clean of glass and Lex was soaking in a warm bath filled with sea salt, citrus oils and other aromatic things that made him feel better, surprisingly. The warm water and soothing fragrances combined to leaden his arms and dull his mind with lethargy. Sweet fragments of the morning's dream wafted through his consciousness and out again, replaced by random thoughts and memories until a bitter one stuck and played out as he soaked.

* * *

Lemony freshness was everywhere in Clark's immaculate apartment, but nowhere more than in the kitchen. The thick citrus scent assaulted him as he walked gracefully into the boxy little room the size of his closet holding an empty glass in one hand and using the other to balance himself. Watching the Shark's game with Clark and Lois on Monday nights and drinking too much had become something of a tradition in the past few years, and the routine comforted Lex with its normalcy and predictability. Tonight was no different than a hundred other nights spent with the happy couple in the cramped quarters Clark had inhabited since graduating from Met U.

Reaching for the handle on the door to the freezer with the arm he was using as a counterbalance turned out to be a mistake. The entire appliance wobbled precariously and dumped its sparse load of TV dinners, frozen pizza and ice onto the dull linoleum. Once Lex had set down the glass he had been carrying and righted himself, he began salvaging the melting items strewn across the floor. Cardboard boxes filled with no doubt carcinogenic additives, preservatives, MSG and a smattering of processed food went back into the chilly depths of the aging freezer.

Next came the daunting task of disposing of the half-melted chunks of ice littering the once clean floor with tiny puddles. As much time as Lex had spent in the bachelor pad, he had spent precious little time in the kitchen and was forced to forage through cupboards and drawers to find enough rags to sop up the mess. Scooping up the remnants of chipped ice he knew Clark bought because Lex preferred it to cubes, the glint of something just a little too shiny caught his eye.

Rolling it between his fingers, staring dumbly at the diamond in his hand, something began to fracture in his chest. Clark had a two plus karat, perfect clarity, princess cut diamond hidden in with his ice in some banal parody of middle class high security with absolutely no hint of its purpose. Okay, perhaps there was a reason for Clark to have a rock like that chilling with the ice, but Lex really did not want to think about what it was. There was only one thing it could be. And Clark hadn't told him because even after all these years, he still didn't trust Lex with the things that mattered.

Numbly, he stumbled back across the slippery floor, onto the worn carpet of the hallway to the living room and gracelessly plopped into the soft chair he had recently vacated. The world kept spinning, the Sharks kept playing and Lois kept snuggling into Clark's arms, smoking and drinking all the while yelling at the television as Lex's world shattered around him. Everything in his being wanted to yell and scream at the top of his lungs, but fear paralyzed him.

Clark noticed his silence and asked, "Hey, Lex, what's wrong?"

Though he wanted to say, "You ruined my life a hundred times and I loved you through all of them and even though you're sleeping with that smoke addled, hyperkenetic caffeine addict, you are still mine, my friend, my best friend and now you want to marry her and destroy my life all over again. You slept with my wife! You broke my heart! I hate you!" but he didn't.

Instead, Lex shook his head, waved his hand and said, "Nothing."

* * *

At some point his head stopped pounding with every sound and he became aware of what was going on around him. Two tiny bath attendants sat perched on the edge of the tub. One was scrubbing his back and the other was rubbing oil into his feet. They were giggling and talking to each other as they went about their work, oblivious to his presence beyond their tasks.

"Kochira yase-koketa otoko wa byoki ni chigai nai." _This emaciated man has to be sick_.

"So da yo. Hone to kawa bakari sa." _That's right. He's just skin and bones_.

"Honekawa Sujio nanika o tabereba ii n'desu." _Mr. Skin- and-Bones needs to eat something_.

"Hai, demo Yopparai-san arukoru o nomimasen." _Yeah, but Mr. Drunkard hardly needs anything else to drink_.

Their conversation came to an abrupt end when Fumito walked into the bathroom. Although Lex had never heard anything coarse or even less than polite come out of his mouth, the man's facility with low-class commands surprised him.

"Mono-ii ni ki wo tsukero. Doko ka itchae yo." _Watch your tongue. Get out of my sight_. His harsh language was hardly fitting of a proper businessman. The girls quickly exited the room, bowing their heads. When they were gone, Fumito turned back to him. "Sumimasen deshita, Ruto-san." _I am sorry, Mr. Luthor_.

"Nani mo sore wa nai desu. Demo sewa ni narimashita." _It's nothing. But I have become indebted to your kindness_.

Fumito nodded and helped him out of the bath and handed him a thick, white towel before leaving to wait in the sitting room. The man really deserved some sort of promotion. He'd look into it when he got to the office. Hell, if it wouldn't complicate things so much, he'd take him back to Metropolis with him tomorrow.

Lex must have been in the tub for quite some time, because the room had been cleaned up and fresh linens were on the bed, as was one of his suits. He wanted nothing more than to climb back between the sheets and sleep until the dream came back, but instead he pulled on the clothes someone had thoughtfully laid out for him. Running a shaky hand over his scalp soothed his nerves a bit.

It was time to go back to Metropolis, but before he went home, he had a phone call he needed to make and he didn't want to do it at the office. The international operator connected him quickly, but it still left enough time for his heart to start beating so hard he could feel it in his throat. He had dialed the number enough times when he'd originally hatched the idiotic plan to stop the engagement for it to be permanently imbedded in his brain.

"Lois Lane." He almost hung up the phone when he heard her crisp greeting.

"Lois, this is Lex." All the pent up nervous energy in his body needed an outlet, immediately, and he was on his feet and pacing the room before he knew what he was doing.

"What the fuck do you want, Luthor? More thoughts on how to ruin my life or is this a social call?" Bitter was too tame a word for her tone.

"Christ, you are making this hard." Lex exhaled shakily and ran his hand across his head. This was harder than he had thought it would be. Exactly how do you start a conversation like this?

"You have ten seconds, and before you even start, I don't want to see any more pretty pictures of Clark and your skanky ex-wife and I most certainly don't want to see you so if it's something else, spit it out." He could practically hear her foot tapping through the phone. She was probably checking her watch and watching the second hand tick away. _Fuck_. Now or never.

"I-knew-about-Clark-and-Lena-before-I-showed-you-that-video," he spit out so rapidly that the words were almost strung together like Christmas tree lights.

"Of course you did, you're a schemer. And Clark's your best friend. The question is exactly how long did you know Clark was a cheating son of a bitch before you did the right thing and came to me?" She didn't even sound surprised.

"Quite some time," _to put it mildly_. And really, doing the right thing by Lois had never entered the equation for a second. Lois could have been deluded about the perfection and purity of her big strong man for the rest of her goddamned life and Lex wouldn't have batted an eyelash. The fact that it worked in his favor for her to discover Clark's myriad flaws had been the deciding factor.

"As in a week? A month? I'm gonna need specifics here." Lois's tendency to speak to him like an annoying child really grated on his nerves, but his irritation with her made it a little easier to come clean.

"Quite a bit longer than that," Lex clipped out with a little more irritation than he'd intended. "I've known he was having an affair with Lena since the divorce."

And hadn't that been a delightful revelation. He'd known that she had to be having an affair, had made exhaustive lists of possible men with a death wish strong enough to cheat with his wife, only to find out that it had been the one person who he trusted so implicitly that his name hadn't even crossed Lex's mind for any of the lists.

"What! You've been divorced for years. Are you trying to tell me that he's been screwing that bitch the entire time we've been together?" Her voice was rough and gravelly and though it started out loud and indignant, by the end it was so low and quiet that Lex had to strain to hear it.

"No, I'm trying to tell you that he was screwing my wife almost the entire length of my marriage, and that to the best of my knowledge when the marriage ended, so did the affair." There would be no point in doing this if Lois murdered Clark in his sleep.

"Obviously not, since he was screwing her in a brand new hotel in that disgusting video." She had a point, but not all the information.

This was the part that made him nauseated. He knew he had to tell her, but he thought he would probably prefer vomiting up glass than telling her it was his fault. And although he personally didn't care if he never saw or spoke to Lois again for the rest of his life, she was a vindictive bitch with a press pass and could make his life miserable well beyond retirement.

"Ah, well, that is what I wanted to talk to you about. I may have had something to do with that. You see, when I first found out about the affair, I put a stop to it. Part of our divorce settlement was that should she ever see or speak to Clark again, the money set aside in a trust for spousal support would evaporate."

"Aren't you a hard ass? So, what, she all of a sudden decided she could live without your money?" She sounded skeptical.

There was a reason Lois was a good reporter, she had instincts and could smell a cover-up a mile away. She was a lot like Chloe that way. In that moment he missed Chloe fiercely; she had been so much easier to handle and Clark had never loved her enough to be worth the trouble of sabotaging anyway. Besides, Chloe always managed to sabotage herself ten times more effectively than anything Lex could ever think up, anyway.

"Not exactly." He swallowed the bile that rose to the back of his throat. "I asked her to call Clark."

"Why the fuck would you do something like that? You aren't an idiot." He could actually hear the wheels turning in her head. "You knew exactly what would happen."

"I'm so sorry, Lois. Of everyone involved in this whole thing you are the only one that didn't deserve to be hurt." Sure, he had _wanted_ to hurt her, but she hadn't technically _deserved_ it.

"You did this to me on purpose, you slimy little prick!" And there was the reaction he had been expecting. "What are you, the Count of fucking Monte Cristo, waiting years for your sick little revenge to play out? All those years you pretended to be his friend, when really you were just lying in wait to spring your little trap. His whole life is ruined, you know. Perry fired him. He has no money."

"It wasn't like that. I was his friend, still am his friend. I just, I don't know, I saw the diamond and something just short circuited in my brain. We never talked about it." Lex would be the last person on the face of the earth that Clark would confide in about that. "He didn't even know that I knew about it at all. I just repressed all that anger and then it all came flooding out at once and I couldn't stop it."

"Wait, what diamond? What are you talking about?" Trust Lois to hone in on that one little detail.

"He was going to ask you to marry him," Lex managed to get out between clenched teeth. His chest was suddenly tight and it reminded him entirely too much of his childhood asthma. He really hadn't wanted to mention that. Ever. That would require thinking about it and his chest hurt enough already without that.

"He was going to ask me to marry him?" Her voice was quiet, lacking the menace this usually indicated in her. It was something closer to awe or hope and he'd never heard Lois like that before.

"Yes." Lex was going to have a headache for days from grinding his teeth, and if this conversation went on much longer he might need to go to the hospital for a breathing treatment or an EKG. He was dizzy and he needed to lie down. The fresh bedding crumpled under his weight as he sank onto the top of the shiny duvet.

"He told you that?" Reporter's instinct was clearly warring with her desire for it to be true.

Lex sighed and told her everything she needed to know to put her fears to rest. "Not exactly, but I saw the diamond. It must have cost his entire savings to buy it. It looked at least two karats."

Actually, Clark never had two cents to rub together. He must have mortgaged his soul to get a rock like that. Had Clark ever loved him that much? The nicest thing Clark had ever bought Lex was the fifth of cheap scotch at that damned frat party and that had been nothing more than a ploy to get laid. Having this conversation was getting more and more like jabbing himself in the eye with a pen.

"I need a cigarette. Fuck, so basically what you're saying is that the second he had someone he wanted to spend the rest of his life with like you expected to do with Lena, you sabotaged him?" Back too that already? "Jesus, Lex, if that's what you do to your friends I'd hate to see what you do to your enemies."

"I know," Lex said miserably. "I'm sorry. It wasn't his fault. I set him up and then I used the tape to convince you to go to bed with me where I knew he would be coming." He simply didn't care anymore. It was too much.

"You manipulative bastard." Indignant was a tone he was familiar with hearing in her voice.

"Be as angry as you want with me, Lois, but you have to give Clark a second chance. He loves you. He fell apart without you." Heavy limbs weighed down with resignation and an intense desire for sleep made it hard to continue holding the phone.

"It doesn't matter. You may have set him up, but it was his choice to sleep with that bitch when she called him. Clearly adultery isn't on his list of activities he won't participate in, so I'm better off without him anyway."

Lex hesitated. She had a point. A very, very good point and he could play it up and still say he'd done his best. But who would he tell? He'd always know that he had sabotaged Clark yet again and he and Lois were the only people who would ever know about this conversation. Lying to himself was something that, though he had tried many times, he could never do convincingly. Besides which, if he didn't get Lois and Clark back together, this entire gut wrenching conversation would be pointless, and he'd invested too much in this to give up now.

"Yes, well, Lena may be a slut, but she's a manipulative bitch, too." _And wasn't that the understatement of the century_. "He never made any attempt to contact her after I convinced her to leave him alone, and I don't think he ever would have. He didn't know that I already knew about them, and I think she was using that to keep him in line. I've been his best friend since he was 15 years old. He would probably do a lot of things he might not other wise do to keep me from finding out that he betrayed me."

"You're saying Lena blackmailed him to have sex with her?" She wanted to believe it, and so did he. Maybe if they both decided to buy it, it would actually be true.

"Most likely. There was no audio on the tape, but if you recall, Clark looked very reluctant to be with her at the beginning, but after a few minutes he did exactly what she wanted." He'd watched that video too many times. He could rationalize it all away if he wanted to, and he did want to, but not for Lois, not anymore.

"I didn't really pay that close attention, but he certainly looked like he was having a good time to me." Lois just needed him to rationalize this one last thing; he could hear it in her voice. Just this one last thing and he could end this torture session.

Though all Lex wanted to say was that Clark always looked like he was having a good time when he was getting laid, he forbore to point that out. Lois might want to know how he knew, and that was a can of worms he most emphatically was not opening.

"Give him another chance. It was my fault." It was all the effort he could put into it, he had nothing else left in him, not even for Clark.

"Answer me one question, first. If you were me, could you honestly take him back?"

_Being in his arms again, kissing him, seeing the love wash over his face, feeling him inside me one last time? I can't imagine anything better, except not knowing it was all an illusion_. He had more in common with Lena than he ever wanted to admit. There was no hesitation. "In a heartbeat."

"So what, now you two are best buddies again? Did he ask you to call me?" God, she was a suspicious bitch.

"I honestly don't think Clark will ever speak to me again. But I will always be his friend. God knows I've fucked up enough times that he's forgiven." _God_, he was so tired.

"But he won't forgive you for this?" Did she actually care? He couldn't tell, and he didn't care. He didn't want her pity on top of it all.

"I think it's safe to say that, yes. I never really loved Lena, she was just someone to help me get where I wanted to go and she felt the same about me. But Clark really loves you. It wasn't a fair trade."

"Just so we're clear, this is the only time Clark has been unfaithful?" She sounded like the nun's at his first boarding school. Maybe she'd missed her calling.

He was tempted to say no, that Clark had cheated on him with Princess Lana the entire time they'd been together, but that was more information than he wanted any reporter to have. "Clark had never cheated on you before, I swear."

"He really wanted to marry me?" _Yes, bitch, we've already been over this_.

"A two plus karat engagement ring on his salary? I can't imagine how much he loves you."

"He did lose it without me." And he'd been fine without Lex. Lois didn't say it, didn't even know enough to imply it, but he heard it anyway.

"Yes, he did." It hurt to admit it.

"He does need a woman." A woman, not a man. Lois, not Lex. Not that it mattered now.

"Yes, he does." He wanted to be unconscious and he really didn't care how he got that way.

"I suppose you want me to talk to him about forgiving you." Always looking for the ulterior motive, that was Lois to a T.

"I just want him to be happy." It was possibly the first truly selfless thing he'd done in his entire life.

"Don't worry. You'll be best man at our wedding yet." Did she know that even the thought of that was like being stabbed in the chest with a giant icicle?

"So, you'll take him back?" He just needed to hear the words and then he could hang up and swallow an entire bottle of sedatives.

"If I have to hunt him down and drag him back by his hair." The image was so funny he almost snorted.

"You're a good woman, Lois. Take care of him."

"You know it."

"Goodbye, then."

"Bye. Oh, and Lex? You ever thought about anger management?"

* * *

Fumito interrupted his preparations for ritual seppuku and dragged him in to work. Apparently hara-kiri wasn't in the cards for Lex, but he could certainly numb his mind with business. There were enough companies out there just waiting to be bought out to keep his brain occupied for years, which was good. Maybe around the time of the Lane-Kent nuptials he could initiate a hostile takeover of Microsoft.

The rest of the day flew by at the office. If anyone noticed the dark circles under his eyes or his reaction to the smell of food, they tactfully ignored it. Fumito had manufactured a crisis in the home office that had delayed Lex's arrival at work and necessitated his immediate return home. They didn't really need him here, anyway, so no one made a fuss. They just bowed and said, "Sayonara."

The details of his flight back to the States took up most of his time. The plane would leave Narita International Airport at noon the following day and he would arrive back in Metropolis with a layover at LAX the next day. Or was it the previous day? It didn't matter. He was taking a commercial flight this time and would be blessedly unreachable the entire trip.

Sheila and Anita would be meeting him in the car at Metropolis International when he arrived with all the paperwork and things that needed his attention. After that, he had a full schedule of board meetings and other business that had fallen by the wayside in his hasty departure for Japan. Now all he had to do was resign himself to the life of droll banality awaiting him on his return to his empty penthouse. Boredom wasn't so bad. Really. He didn't need anyone else. Certainly not Clark. God, he was fucked.

Even if Clark did want to be friends again, could Lex really handle seeing the only person he had ever truly loved awash in connubial bliss? Far better men than he would balk at watching their lovers move on and make lives for themselves with someone else. Lex simply wasn't that strong, and that was what had led to this in the first place, wasn't it? No, it was better that he and Clark finally went their separate ways. He would still have his dreams that way, but he wouldn't be plagued with the daily reminder of their impossibility.

* * *

It was Lex's last night in Tokyo and traditionally he would be out on the town engaged in some kind of debauchery, but he just didn't feel like it this time. Sleep was so seductive it was almost impossible to resist at this point, but Fumito was there and after everything today Lex wanted comfort more than unconsciousness. Besides, there wasn't anyone left for him back in Metropolis, not even anyone he could really call a friend, and goddamn it he didn't have to justify it. He was an adult, had been for some time, and why the hell did he suddenly feel guilty?

The soft slide of his shirt off his shoulders and the soft press of lips on his skin made him sigh. Wanting to feel loved didn't turn fucking into making love, but Lex didn't care. It felt good. Hands on his body, mouth on his dick, it all felt so good that before he knew it, he was pumping his hips and gasping for air. But just as he was about to come, the wet hot suction was gone.

"Get. The. Fuck. Out." Clark's message was clear and needed no translation. Neither did the malice in his eyes when Clark looked at the slightly crumpled form of Fumito at the base of the wall he'd just been thrown into.

Fumito looked dazed as he moved to grab his clothes, but before he could get anywhere near them Clark growled, "_Now_." The naked man ran out of the suite as if for his life, and given the rings of fire in Clark's eyes and the man-sized dent Fumito had left in the wall where Clark had thrown him, it was probably the smartest thing he ever did. Clark didn't look at Lex, just backed away from the bed before Lex could really comprehend what was happening.

"What the fuck is wrong with you, Luthor?" Clark yelled as he threw a chair into the wall, shards of wood flying everywhere.

"My father never loved me. What the fuck are you doing here, Clark, and how the hell did you get in?" Clearly Lex had lost his mind, but he couldn't stop himself. It was too much after the day he'd had.

"I can't believe you! Did you honestly think that I was so pathetic that I would just let you break me, again? I'm not some stupid kid you can just toss aside without even saying goodbye and good riddance to anymore." Clark looked manic, growling out accusations that made no sense and prowling back and forth at the other end of the room, hands alternately running through his hair and breaking things.

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Clark. But I am tired and I would like to go to sleep, so can we make this fast?" Lex was trying to affect calm detachment, but he thought from Clark's reaction that bored was probably closer to what he actually achieved.

"I could kill you right now, you arrogant son of a bitch," Clark snarled as he practically flew across the room toward Lex. And he really did look like he might.

_God, how was it possible for Clark to look so fucking hot and so fucking homicidal at the same time?_

The normally tamed black mane flew wildly in every direction, framing Clark's face like a work of art, highlighting his pretty eyes and cocksucker lips. And while normally Clark covered himself in clothes so bulky and ill-fitting he might as well be wearing a tarp, tonight he was wearing a skin-tight, green cotton t-shirt that clung to his muscles in a way that made Lex's mouth dry, and a low slung pair of jeans that drew the eye to his rather delightful assets.

"Fine, get it over with then." It would be the perfect ending to Lex's day, after all, to be killed by this beautiful avenging angel he'd lusted after for more than a decade, whose life he'd ruined and returned tarnished. Almost poetic.

"My god, you are the most infuriating asshole on the face of the planet. Do you have some kind of death wish?" Clark was yelling now, and only inches from Lex's face.

Arms that could bend rebar caged Lex's head, body like steel pinning him to the bed. Meanwhile, Lex was still naked and hard and being underneath Clark did little to alleviate that. He'd seen the ring of flames in Clark's eyes before and his body remembered how that had ended. Almost of their own accord, his hips shifted so that his erection rubbed Clark's thigh. At the same time his right hand cupped Clark's groin and began massaging the half hard dick encased in denim.

"Currently? Yes." Lex purred, as he slipped his left hand into the waistband of the soft jeans and felt Clark's dick swell in his palm. He tightened his fist and began jerking roughly.

"You're trying to make me insane, aren't you?" Clark whimpered as he thrust into Lex's hand a few times before closing his eyes tightly and rolling off Lex to the other side of the huge bed.

Lex watched him lay there, chest rising and falling, beautiful face covered by big hands. Rationally, Lex would have let it go now that the situation was diffused a little, but his mind wasn't in control and his body wanted those hands on it again. That dream had reawakened every nerve Clark had ever touched.

"It looks to me like you already are. Wouldn't be much of a challenge, would it?" Lex sneered, hoping for a reaction.

Clark looked over at him and groaned just as Lex began stroking his own dick, already slick with spit and pre-cum. Normally placid green eyes flamed orange as they followed Lex's hand up and down the length of his cock. Lex was so close, swiping his thumb over the slit at the head on every pass. Clark was mesmerized for a second before he reached over and grabbed Lex's wrist, effectively stopping the motion.

"Just tell me why you are doing this to me. Again. Is it because you know you can't hurt me physically that makes you feel the need to hurt me like this?" asked Clark angrily.

Though the expression on Clark's face wavered from angry to hungry to pain in a confused mix of intents, there was no give in the hand on his wrist and Lex's dick throbbed painfully in his still hand. He'd been on the edge too long and he needed it to end soon, one way or another.

"Will you please just cut to the chase?" Lex snapped. "Did I do something to you today that I just don't remember or have you actually lost your mind?"

"You unbelievable bastard. I can't believe you are just going to sit there and deny it to my face." Frank astonishment dripped from every word Clark spoke.

"How many times do I have to tell you I don't know what you're talking about before it permeates that thick skull of yours? Two, three more times?" Lex barely contained himself from knocking on Clark's head with his free hand.

"Lois." Clark spit her name out like an accusation as he tightened his grip on Lex's wrist painfully before releasing it. "And whoever the fuck that was sucking on your dick when I came in for starters."

"What about Lois?" Lex rubbed his sore wrist before adding, "And he's none of your goddamned business." Fumito was a good guy and didn't deserve to get caught up in whatever was going on between Lex and Clark.

"Any fucking thing that has to do with your dick is goddamned well my business, you lying little cocksucker." A big hand not his own was stroking Lex possessively, making him gasp. Clark sucked the soft shell of his ear before whispering a question. "Why am I getting phone calls from Lois saying that if I still want to get married, she'll forgive me?"

"I don't believe you've ever had a problem with my cock sucking ability if memory serves," Lex gasped as Clark continued to stroke him. "And the appropriate response when someone does something nice for you is to say 'thank you', not interrupt them in the middle of a blowjob to scream at them."

"Something _nice_?" Clark's hand was gone.

While Lex scrubbed his hands over his face, Clark moved away entirely and was now sitting awkwardly in a chair opposite the bed. It was just as well. This conversation and sex should never have been mixed in the first place.

A sigh escaped Lex's lips and he tilted his head to look at Clark as he responded, "Yes, something nice. I thought you could use a little bit of help getting her back, but obviously you had it all under control without my help. Pardon me for wanting you to be happy." A pained expression crossed Clark's face. "What, you can't even take that from me now?"

"Exactly what part of that little scenario was supposed to make me happy? The part where I tell you that I love you and you fob me off on someone who couldn't be bothered to hear my side of the story before she judged me guilty and slept with my best friend before getting me fired and stealing my byline, or the bit where you tell me that you love me and I come back to find you getting your dick sucked by one of your underlings? Or maybe the thing that's supposed to make me happy is your complete refusal to acknowledge our relationship at all. Explain it to me, Lex, because I'm obviously too thick to understand."

He sounded resigned, or maybe just tired. It would be better for both of them to just put and end to it.

"Clark, the last time I saw you I thought I made it pretty clear where our relationship stood, as in we have none. Or did you miss the memo while you were throwing up on my carpet?"

"I can't believe you just said that to me." Something was wrong, different, whatever. There was no sound of slamming doors, no Clark stalking off in a huff, only a sad look on a tired man's face as he slumped in his chair.

"I can't believe that you think what a man says during sex means shit in the light of day." Lex had never believed anything anyone said mid-coitus, not for a second no matter how much he had wanted it to be true. "You don't love me," the tightness in his chest was back all at once. Pulling the comforter across his body, Lex closed his eyes, needing the barrier between him and Clark, however thin it might be. "You never have and I can't believe I put myself through all that crap with Lois for you today."

"You are the most pigheaded idiot I have ever met. I've been in love with you since I was a kid, but I'm not a kid anymore and I'm not just going to blindly follow wherever you point me ever again." Clark's voice faltered suddenly. "You can't just sweep me under the rug like a dirty little secret and pretend I don't exist again."

There would never be enough blankets to cover the misery pouring off Lex, but he gathered them around him like courage anyway. Maybe if he covered his head the monsters wouldn't be able to get him, but it had never worked in the past so Lex let the fleeting thought go quickly. Sometime during the fight he had stopped lounging on the bed, and was now sitting bolt upright with the blanket clutched tightly over his lap. Being the only one naked for this conversation was putting him at a distinct disadvantage, and Clark certainly wasn't about to take his clothes off any time soon, which was a pity.

That state of inequality was completely intolerable, so Lex forced himself to let go of the blankets, stand up and walk over to the chair with his robe hanging over the low back. The unmistakable sensation of Clark's eyes on him lasted from the moment the blankets fell from his lap until the robe was tightly synched around his waist, but he couldn't bring himself to look in Clark's direction anyway. Though still at a disadvantage, Lex at least he had some degree of freedom now.

Lex tugged at the fabric belt that was the only thing keeping the enormous silk dressing gown closed, turned, leaned against the chair for support and looked directly into Clark's pain-filled eyes. He began to speak, slowly, calmly and with as much confidence as he could muster. His voice never wavered.

"Clark, the entire history of our relationship consists of you using me and me forgiving you, with the occasional heroic rescue thrown in to keep me panting for you. It was one thing when you were using me for favors, but when you started using me for your little experimentation phase you crossed the line. You took advantage of my feelings for you then, and I let you, but I'm not going to let you do it now."

"How can you say that to me?" Clark was up pacing the room, mid-rant before Lex could open his mouth to respond. "I was like a love sick little puppy, following you around just begging for your attention, and when you deigned to lower yourself to give it to me, you turned right around and fucked the first society bitch to wag her tail in your face just to keep me in my place. And then you _married_ her."

"Oh, poor baby," slipped from Lex's mouth, though he hadn't meant to say it aloud. "I might feel sorry for you if you hadn't been fucking Lana the entire time."

The pacing and the ranting were both cut short by the airing of the most festering canker on Lex's soul. Jealousy and hurt and pain that had been suppressed for years churned in his stomach and he sucked in a breath to push the bile back down his throat. The intricate pattern of goldfish swimming in a pond filled with lily pads woven into the plush rug he stood on filled his field of vision, and he couldn't tear his eyes away from the fascinating design at his feet.

Clark stood in the center of the room, staring at him for a moment before he spoke. "Lex, of the two of us in this room, only one of us has ever fucked Lana, and it isn't me."

At that statement Lex's head snapped up, no longer entranced by the giant koi swimming around his floor. Lex and Clark stood only a few feet apart, but the space between them couldn't even be measured in miles. Cold fury bubbled up inside him as a draft from the open glass doors to the terrace blew through the room. If the chair had been able to it might have screamed when Lex dug his manicured nails into its soft leather skin.

"That's bullshit, Clark. Do you think I'm blind? What am I saying; of course you think I'm blind. You've always expected me to just swallow your goddamned lies like I can't see two feet in front of me." And Lex had always swallowed it, too, because Clark would take himself away if he didn't and Lex had never been willing to pay that price.

"I don't know what you think happened between me and Lana," Clark walked toward him slowly and spoke as if he was speaking to a child, possibly a child with a learning disability, "but I have never in my entire life had sex with her. I was entirely too wrapped up in you to even think about anyone else, let alone touch them."

"I bought the condoms for her the night before the fucking prom!" Lex screeched. "I saw her coming out of your room in the morning a hundred times; you know the one at the frat with the tie permanently attached to the door handle? You remember it, the one she was practically living in."

"You know, for a genius, you are the stupidest man I have ever met," Clark yelled, apparently giving up on his attempt to calm either of them, and closed the gap between them. "After she let you take her virginity you'd think it might have crossed your mind that she was over me, and moving on with her life. She didn't want me; she wanted you, you idiot. She spent years trying to get you to notice her before you married someone else and she finally got the hint. I was never as smart as her."

Clark slumped his shoulders and stepped back. So far back in fact that he ran into the bed, flopped down onto it with his knees and feet still hanging over the end of the frame, and stared at the ceiling for a moment. A moment in which Lex found he had moved across the room, and was now standing between Clark's knees. He looked down on the beautiful body on the bed, almost entranced until Clark's aggravated voice broke the spell.

"And did it really never once occur to you that she might have been at the frat to see Pete? You remember my roommate Pete, Pete Ross, her goddamned husband!"

"You never slept with Lana?" Something inside him broke. It had never seemed like even a remote enough possibility to fantasize about, let alone plausible enough to consider trusting Clark. And now the reality of what he had done in response to something that had never actually happened began seeping into the cracks and his chest hurt.

Tears threatening to cascade down his face, Lex blinked rapidly in a vain attempt to hold the flood back. The hulking body that only seconds before had been prone was now sitting upright, and Clark pulled him down to sit on his lap. Not that Lex had a problem with that per se, since his knees felt like buckling anyway.

"No," the word caressed his chest as Clark caressed his face. "I never slept with Lana. I had never slept with anyone but you before you told me you were getting married to that whore. I was in love with you."

"But what about all those girls with the gravity defying breasts you were always going on about? You were a bigger slut than I was before I came to Smallville."

"What are you talking about, Lex?" Clark asked, obviously confused. Lex eyed him skeptically. "Fine, I admit I went a little overboard after you dumped me. I fucked all the cheerleaders and half the football team before I lowered my standards and moved on to anything with two legs. But that was just because I was hurting and I wanted something, anything to make me feel better."

"Why didn't you ever just tell me how you felt?" Lex leaned into the touch of Clark's hand on his cheek, but it was gone and so was Clark. Faster than he could even perceive, Clark had moved Lex off his lap and onto the bed and himself into a chair at the other end of the room.

"When was I supposed to have this hypothetical conversation with you, Lex? The day I woke up happier than I'd been since the day you hit me on the bridge and then you asked me to be your best man when you married the bitch, or maybe your wedding day? Or perhaps a better time to tell you that I belonged to you just as much as the twenty cars in your garage did would have been when you got back from your honeymoon. I was certainly as disposable as one of your prized possessions, and hey, you'd all ready broken me and replaced me like one of those damned cars by that time, too."

"I see your point," he did, "but Clark, if I'd ever thought for a second that it was even remotely possible that you loved me I would have left her in a heartbeat."

A brief pause filled the room with a happy silence before Lex filled it with a question he couldn't keep inside any longer.

"Why did you have to go and sleep with my wife? It ruined my life. I went crazy trying to figure out what I did wrong, what was wrong with me, why she left me. And then I found out it was because she was fucking you and I completely fell apart. If my father had still been alive I would have been back at Belle Reve for an extended stay so fast it would have set a land speed record. I trusted you and you betrayed me."

"Because I was a stupid kid, and I was so jealous I couldn't see straight. I just wanted her gone so we could be together again. I was desperate. I thought, well, I wasn't really thinking straight, but I thought if you saw what a fucking whore she was, you'd leave her and things could go back to the way they were between us."

Clark was pacing again. Lex wanted him to stop, sit down in the chair or even on the edge of the bed as he had just a minute before. As if he had some psychic power, Clark stopped walking, turned away from the bed toward the window and stood still as he continued.

"It was the stupidest thing I have ever done, and I have regretted it every day since then. I realized almost immediately what a colossally bad idea it had been, but by that time Lena had her claws in me so deep I couldn't get away. She is a manipulative bitch and I don't think she was ever going to let me go. The only feelings I've ever had for that cunt were disgust, jealousy, and hatred."

"If you hate her so much, why did you go back to her last night?" Lex was unable to keep the bitterness from his voice.

"I make bad decisions when I'm upset." Clark paused, and Lex could see the remorse on his face reflected off the glass. "You looked me in the eye while that guy sucked you off right in front of me, and even then I couldn't stop jacking off like some kind of sick, perverted stalker." Lex paled, remembering the tortured hallucination that had apparently been real as Clark continued, oblivious to the effect his statement had made. "I wanted you to feel as bad as I did, and I knew screwing Lena would do it."

The shame that vibrated in every muscle of Clark's back was all the apology Lex needed.

"Mission accomplished," Lex laughed uneasily. "I drank an entire bottle of scotch and completely demolished my suite last night after I got off the phone with her."

Clark turned and looked at Lex like he had grown an extra head. "I know, Lex, I was here, remember?"

"What do you mean you were here?" Lex asked cautiously. There was nothing he hated more than not being able to remember his own life.

"I mean I was here, in the room after you trashed it. I found you in the middle of the bed bleeding to death," Clark's voice warbled. "I took you with me to the Fortress of Solitude so the AI could heal you. You were dying, Lex."

"I was just drunk," Lex shook his head vehemently as he denied the implications.

While Lex relived the tantrum in his mind, Clark closed the space between them and knelt in front of him. Big hands too soft to have ever done farm work caressed his bare feet and ripped him from the memory.

"Your feet were shredded to ribbons and imbedded with glass." Clark kissed the sole of Lex's left foot before he began speaking again. "You had cuts all over your head and your face, not to mention the damage to your hands. The tendons in your left hand were completely severed, and you had lost so much blood by the time I got there I was afraid you weren't going to make it."

A glassy-eyed Clark pushed Lex gently back onto the bed, laid down next to him and continued kissing and running his fingers lightly over all the places where there had been hurts. Only the Clark in his dreams had ever touched him with this much tenderness. It was painfully familiar and it was nothing like any of the lust driven encounters of their past.

But Lex kept denying it, like he would feel all the cuts and pain all over again if he admitted it were true. "No, I just had scratches. I heal fast."

"When you woke up you told me that you missed me. You told me that you forgave me and that everything would be all right. You told me that you loved me, Lex," Clark whispered like it hurt more to remember that than the self-inflicted lacerations had hurt Lex. "How can none of this ring any bells over there?"

"No, that was just a dream." _It couldn't be true_. "I haven't seen you in a week. That was just a dream. A really good dream. We were floating and we made love and you told me that you loved me and I never thought I'd hear you say that when I wasn't fucking you and everything was good," Lex was babbling and he knew it, "but it was still just a dream. I woke up in the bed here in the middle of the afternoon with a hangover."

"It wasn't a hangover, Lex, it was the aftereffects of the AI healing you. You told me to bring you back here, you said that you had business that you needed to wrap up, you said it would look strange if I was suddenly with you in your hotel room in Japan without a passport or a plane ticket or any explanation of how I got here. You said it was to protect me, to protect my secret."

Clark sounded like he was going to hyperventilate, but he kept going anyway, getting louder and louder as he continued on.

"And then as soon as I get home I start getting phone calls from Lois saying she wants to get back together and I find out that you told her I want to marry her and basically begged her to take me back. Then when I come back here to find out what the fuck is going on, your little Japanese boy toy is sucking you off again."

"I thought it was a dream," Lex defended weakly. "I wanted you to be happy. I thought you wanted Lois."

"When I walked in on you and Lois fucking on your desk," Lex winced at the memory and so did Clark as he continued on, "did I make any attempt to get back together with her? No. I came to you. Not Lois, you. And where the hell did you get the idea that I wanted to marry her into your head?"

"I saw a diamond in your apartment three weeks ago when I was getting ice out of your freezer for my drink," Lex explained. "I knocked a whole bunch of it onto the floor accidentally. At first I thought it was all actually ice, but then when I was wiping the linoleum off I realized what it was. It was huge, at least two karats. You don't put diamonds like that in anything but engagement rings."

"Oh, well, I uh, sort of made that," Clark blushed. "I was trying to make a gift for my mother. It would have been her and my dad's thirtieth anniversary this year, and I wanted to give her something special since I couldn't give dad back to her."

"You made that?" Lex asked in awe.

"Yeah. You remember that old movie you used to make me watch, Ferris Bueller? Well, it sort of gave me the idea."

An image of Clark shoving a piece of coal up his ass popped into Lex's head unbidden. He paled and said, "You didn't..."

"No! I used my hands, you pervert," Clark explained and poked Lex in the ribs. "I was trying to make her a set of earrings but they keep coming out different sizes."

They both laughed so hard they cried and rolled into each other on the bed. Everything was out in the open, and the feeling of release was so freeing that Lex felt light headed. After a moment when the need to chuckle had worn off, their eyes met and then their lips. The kiss was soft and wet and it felt like a homecoming. For a moment everything was perfect, just like the dream that wasn't a dream, and then Lex remembered.

It was hard to get much paler than Lex already was, but he did. He pulled out of the kiss and pushed away from Clark, who looked a little feral and a lot lost. Clark tried to pull him back again, like kissing him could actually make it better, like Lex hadn't betrayed him and Lex wanted it to be true, but he knew it wasn't.

"Oh my god, Clark, I am so sorry," Lex whispered as he kept Clark at arms length. "I thought, I thought you were going to ask Lois to marry you and I freaked out. I don't know what I was thinking, except that I couldn't handle it if you married her. I called Lena and told her that if she called you and got you to have sex with her in front of a hidden camera in the hotel, I wouldn't cut her off from the trust I set aside for her in the divorce." "You what?!" Clark gasped as all the blood drained out of his ruddy cheeks. He wasn't fighting Lex anymore, just lying there, and looking like he might throw up.

"I've known about your affair with her since about a week after she left me and all that resentment was bottled up inside me and I just couldn't stop myself once it started coming out. I showed Lois the tape. She was so angry with you, I mean Lorena Bobbit mad at you, and I just sort of offered her an outlet. I manipulated her into letting me fuck her on the desk when I knew you'd be coming so she couldn't take it back when she inevitably cooled down and wanted you back again. I just couldn't stand the thought of you and Lois together anymore."

"I cannot believe that you did that to me."

Misery washed over Lex as he responded lamely, "I know, I'm so sorry. I was trying to fix it. That's why I called Lois. I told her it was my fault." He'd meant to fix things. Really. But he should have learned long ago that he just made things worse when he tried to do the right thing.

"That is the most sick, twisted thing you have ever done, Lex!" Clark accused, running his fingers through his hair like he didn't trust himself to touch anything else. "It's also the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me."

It was the last thing Lex had expected to hear in response to his confession. His heart felt like it was lodged in his throat, and the hiccupping sob that erupted from his chest did little to dislodge it. Clark wrapped his arms around him and ignored the wet spot growing on his shirt in favor of kissing the top of Lex's scalp and running his hands up and down his back.

When Lex looked up he wasn't the only one with damp eyes. He ran his hand down Clark's cheek and rubbed his thumb through the moisture under Clark's eye and kissed him. The soft lips parted and let Lex slide his tongue inside. Lex lay there on the bed kissing Clark and touching Clark and pulling off Clark's clothes and pressing his body into Clark as if he might disappear like another mirage of his subconscious for what seemed like forever. But it never happened.

Clark didn't disappear and he didn't take it back and he didn't hate Lex. What Clark did do was kiss Lex back and murmur that he loved him into his mouth and his skin and touch Lex all over like he might break. Until he stopped kissing Lex and touching him and moving at all. And then Clark asked for something he never should have needed to.

"Lex, tell me that you love me."

"I love you, fuck I love you so goddamned much," Lex growled. Clark chose that moment to rub his erection against Lex's groin, and Lex groaned, "Oh fuck Clark, god you feel so good, missed you so goddamned much."

"Tell me the first time you knew you loved me," commanded Clark as he slipped his hand under the shoulder of the silk robe still clinging to Lex's body.

"Oh god, when you brought the truck back," Lex shivered as the fabric fell away from his skin. "I've loved you since you were jailbait."

Sucking kisses that would bruise his neck made Lex a little frantic, his whole body vibrating in time with the pulsing of his blood in the spot where Clark's mouth touched the delicate skin where his throat and shoulder met. One of Clark's hands was moving down his back to cup his ass, and Lex might have noticed it if it weren't for the other hand moving down his belly, brushing tantalizingly close to his cock but not quite touching it.

"God, I felt like such a pervert, in love with my best friend, wanting a 15-year-old kid so bad I could barely control myself. I felt like a goddamned pedophile. So fucking beautiful. I jerked off in that room with all the little pieces of you all around me every night. Even after Helen moved in. I couldn't stop myself." Lex sighed as Clark's hand finally touched him where he needed it. "Oh fuck, love you so much, I thought everyone knew, could tell just by looking at me."

"Jesus, Lex," Clark exhaled heavily, still caressing the heavy cock in his hand like something precious. "Fuck, I used to imagine you sitting in that room, looking at those huge pictures of me and touching yourself. So fucking hot. Couldn't fucking focus on any of the girls at school, only you, every night and every morning in the shower. God, I wanted to touch you so bad I thought I might actually die."

"Oh god, Clark," Lex groaned.

He needed this, not the sex but just to hear this. It was a fucking wet dream come true, but he didn't want to come yet, and Clark wouldn't let him. The wet tip Clark's cock was trailing a slick path up his thigh as Clark rubbed against him with the same rhythm as the light touches to his own. Lex pressed into him, and moaned when Clark hardened his strokes.

"I waited for you so long, tried to give you all the right signals, but you never laid a fucking hand on me and I couldn't stand it anymore. I needed to touch you," Clark intoned deeply and ran his thumb over the leaking head of Lex's aching dick. "Needed you to touch me. I couldn't wait any longer, couldn't stand just imagining the feel of your skin on mine or your lips against mine or your tongue in my mouth or your hand on my cock, but I was scared. Fuck, I had to get so drunk I could barely see to get up the nerve just to kiss you."

The memory of that first fumbled kiss assaulted Lex, the wet lips sliding over his, the thick tongue demanding entrance to his mouth and the desperation in Clark's eyes. Everything about that kiss was perfect and Lex remembered how good it felt when Clark had finally been more than a fantasy, but actually there, pressing his body hot and needy into Lex.

"But fuck, when I finally did get to touch you, god you were so hot, I came in my pants before I could even think about what I wanted to do to you every goddamned time," and Clark's voice broke as he thrust against him, making a strangled noise like he might come right then just like in the beginning.

"Oh god, Lex, please touch me," Clark begged and Lex complied. "Fuck, and then I came again every time I sucked you off, couldn't wait, so fucking hard I had to jack myself off while I sucked you. Ruined like every pair of boxers I owned until the first time you fucked me. Do you remember?"

Clark naked underneath him, writhing and spurting slick cum on his chest flashed in front of Lex's eyes. The slapping of bodies covered in sweat slamming into each other and sound of papers and glass and metal flying from the desk and crashing into the floor rang in his ears. The incredible heat from Clark's eyes and being inside him flared in his chest.

"On the desk in my office," Lex remembered as he thrust into Clark's hand. "I couldn't stop myself, wanted you so bad and you were right there and you wanted it too and I had to fuck you before I went insane with wanting you. Fuck, I was hanging on by a thread, needed you so bad. Wanted you so much I could barely breathe."

Growling deep in his throat, Clark finished the story, "God, I wanted you so much, never wanted anyone that much, I needed you, needed to fuck you, but I couldn't control myself and I didn't want to hurt you, but I had to have you and make sure you knew you were mine. Not some bitch in the paper, mine, only mine, always mine."

Neither of them could talk, could make more than primal noises and broken moans as they pulled at each other's cocks and rubbed their bodies together. Lex was close, so close when Clark let go and kissed him ferociously. Clark continued to grind against him but his hand didn't return.

"Tell me that you're mine, tell me you belong to me," Clark commanded breathily.

"Yours, always yours. Never want anyone but you, god, only you, only ever you, always you."

The friction was almost enough, and it was Clark and he couldn't quite control his body any more. Even the raw ache of his hip bones as they rammed into the concrete hardness of Clark's pelvis wasn't enough to keep him aware of anything but little pin pricks of light behind his eyes. His hand went limp and he could feel the tightness coiling in his spine.

"Oh god, Lex, please don't stop," Clark whimpered. "Please don't stop, oh god I love you so much, Lex, tell me you love me."

"Oh god, Clark, fuck I love you so much, god, I love you. Fuck. Clark, Clark, CLARK!" Lex shouted and spilled cum all over both their bellies before every muscle in his body went limp.

"Please don't stop touching me, please, oh god, Lex, please don't stop, need you, please," desperation tinged Clark's voice and Lex wrapped his hand back around Clark's still swollen cock. "Oh god, love you, oh fuck, LEX!"

* * *

Later, when they were lying in bed, Clark ran his hands down Lex's rib cage, counting each as his thumbs passed across them. Really, even without x-ray vision, Lex could count his own ribs just by looking. They stuck out and his belly dipped in below the bottom rib like a bowl. His hipbones and pelvic bone were clearly outlined as well.

"I should take you home to my mother. You look like a sack of bones," Clark teased affectionately.

"I'm sure your mother would leap at the chance to fatten me up." Lex's stomach took the opportunity to voice its opinion by making an embarrassing gurgling noise.

"You have no idea. She still cooks like she's feeding an army but there is no one there to eat it," Clark said with a far off look in his eyes. "We should go visit her when we get home tomorrow."

"Alright, but I'm buying the woman a herd of cattle and a dozen farm hands so she has something to worry about besides stuffing me with food," Lex grumbled along with his stomach. "Not that I am in any way opposed to eating anything your mother makes."

"I'm sure she can live with those terms." Clark smiled. "It might even take her mind off the fact that there won't be a wedding for her to plan. She's been after me to marry Lois for years."

"Who says there won't be a wedding for her to plan?" said Lex in all seriousness.

"You always did like getting married didn't you?" Clark laughed. "Been too long since your last wedding fix, Lex?"

"Just one more and I'll be happy." The corners of Lex's mouth quirked into a smile.

"That might be arranged if you can avoid marrying me off to someone else for a week. Lois seemed pretty willing."

"You are such a brat." Lex hit Clark in the face with a heavy goose down pillow.

Clark laughed as he doled out his come back, "And you are a serial monogamist and an evil defiler of virgins."

Lex rolled over, looked at Clark and dryly asked, "So does everyone on the planet know I slept with Lana, or are there places in China that haven't heard yet?"

"Nope, sorry, even in China. She practically broadcast it on the nightly news," Clark managed before he burst out laughing.

"She makes me promise not to tell anyone, ever, and then goes around telling everyone?" Lex made a scandalized face to hide his irritation. "I felt guilty about it for years."

"As well you should," Clark teased and blew a raspberry into his belly. "What were you doing sleeping with her in the first place?"

"You weren't speaking with me, my father tried to kill me, and everyone hated me," It had been one of the bleakest times of his life. "Everyone except Lana."

"So you slept with the girl you knew I was in love with because she was nice to you?" Clark sounded appalled.

"Says the man who slept with my wife," snarked Lex.

"Touche."

"She reminded me of you before you hated me," Lex said softly.

"You want to know how we spent prom night?" Clark continued before Lex had a chance to say no, "We spent the whole night up in my loft pining over you. It was like a little pity party for two. She felt the need to tell me in great detail what a great lover you are, like I needed more fodder for the imagination. Then she went home, I jerked off and went to bed."

"We're a perfect set, you and I. Matching neuroses," sighed Lex.

"Wouldn't want to break up a set," Clark grinned.

"No, we wouldn't. Meant to be together." Lex let out an, "Oomf!" as Clark rolled on top of him.

"Destiny?" Clark flashed him one of those huge, toothy smiles that he'd fallen in love with from the beginning.

Lex knew his line and he said it with a smile, "Stuff of legends, Clark."

 

 


End file.
